The Trader's Guide to Key Economic Indicators (3^rd Ed.)
Bloomberg Financial Series

New economic data are reported virtually every trading day. Investors, big and small, have to understand how these reports influence their investments, portfolios, and future sources of income. The third edition of The Trader's Guide to Key Economic Indicators examines the most important economic statistics currently used on Wall Street. In a straightforward and accessible style, it tells you exactly what these reports measure and what they really mean.

Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, this reliable resource sheds some much-needed light on theses numbers and data releases and shows you what to look for and how to react to various economic indicators.

• Covers everything from gross domestic product and employment to consumer confidence and spending
• Author Richard Yamarone shares his experience as a former trader, academic, and current Wall Street economist
• Illustrated with instructive graphs and charts that will put you ahead of market curves

Engaging and informative, this book will put you in a better position to make more informed investment decisions, based of some of today's most influential economic indicators.

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Gross Domestic Product 11

Chapter 2 Indexes of Leading, Lagging, and Coincident Indicators 47

Chapter 3 The Employment Situation 65

Chapter 4 Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization 83

Chapter 5 Institute for Supply Management Indexes 101

Chapter 6 Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, and Orders 123

Chapter 7 Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales 139

Chapter 8 New Residential Construction 151

Chapter 9 Conference Board Consumer Confidence and University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Indexes 167

Chapter 10 Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services 183

Chapter 11 Personal Income and Outlays 199

Chapter 12 Consumer and Producer Price Indexes 219

Chapter 13 The Fixed-Income Market 235

Chapter 14 Commodities 259

About the Author 285

Index 287

RICHARD YAMARONE is a Bloomberg Senior Economist with more than two decades of experience on monetary and fiscal policy, economic indicators, fixed income, commodities, and general macroeconomic conditions. He authors and oversees the Bloomberg BRIEF: Economics, a daily newsletter that features analysis, data, and news on the forces shaping the global economy. Yamarone is also the creator of the Bloomberg Orange Book, a compilation of macroeconomic anecdotes gleaned from comments that CEOs and CFOs made on quarterly earnings conference calls. He is a member of the National Association for Business Economists, the American Economic Association, the New York State Economics Association, and the Money Marketeers of New York University. Yamarone has won numerous accolades for his work, including being featured as one of the top ten economists in the U.S. by USA Today in 2007 and was named “Nostradamus of the Financial Industry” by Bank Advisor in 2008 for his prediction of the financial crises.