The best economic indicator you've never heard of | Hacker News Reader

The best economic indicator you've never heard of

slate.com

41 pointsalex_c10 comments

Interesting, I had indeed not heard of it. And before you get all confused like I did, I should point out that this article is from 2003.

Recent data: http://www.investmenttools.com/futures/bdi_baltic_dry_index....

They mention it fairly often on the day-time market-watching shows on CNBC.

Also the index fell by 90% recently

This is kind of dubious. Check out the BDI graph here.

http://www.investmenttools.com/futures/bdi_baltic_dry_index....

In a world full of indices for anything you can think of some things are likely to map the economy well at any point in time, until they don't. Perhaps I don't have enough of a formal economics/finance education, but looking at the current BDI graph and comparing it with the other economic indicators I didn't see that much consensus.

Here's another reference to various economic indicators that appeared in the Boston Globe back in late October.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/10/26/...

Yet another post about it, and more recent:

http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/the-baltic-dry-ind...

I am a fan of the christmas light economic indicator http://www.reason.com/news/show/32837.html

"... The BDI is a good leading indicator for economic growth and production ..."

So is sales of scrap metal indicated by the LME (London Metal Exchange) http://www.metalprices.com/#tables A lot of scrap metal merchants are going out of business in China at the moment as demand drops in the cut throat market.

If you're not actively trading, you should only care about long term changes. The best indicator I know is changes in productivity. It is a great predictor of permanent increases in wealth.

The BDI lags large macro economic trends like growth in China. And it doesn't reveal anything more specific then booming growth in trade with China.

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