Russell Investments has a great interactive tool on their site, which gives an at-a-glance view of the economy relative to typical ranges of measure. It is dynamically updated, on a monthly basis, and comes with all of the supplementary background charts for each measure in the dashboard. Check it out.
In the snapshot below which is dated as at February 28, 2009 the chart shows that:
- Credit risk as measured by the TED spread is trending towards and within the typical historical range at 1.01.
- Corporate debt as measured by OAS, Option-adjusted spread on investment grade corporate debt, is well above the historical range at 5.05 and trending back towards typical.
- Volatility as measured by the VIX index is still high at 46.35 and trending back towards typical, which is between 11.10 and 26.84.
- Mortgage deliquencies, whoa! They have skyrocketed to 6.92% and are continuing to trend away from typical, which is between 1.51 and 3.35.
- Employment growth is trending lower, but spending is trending higher.
- and so on...
Click the picture of the chart to get to the tool, or click here:
Happy Economicking!
Source: Russell Investments
http://www.russell.com/Helping-Advisors/Markets/EconomicRecoveryDashboard.asp
