ECRI's Weekly Leading Index (WLI)

Though my daytrades can be measured in minutes/hours, and my swing trades can be measured in hours/days, and my investments can be measured in weeks/months, I still pay attention to the overall fundamental outlook of the US Economy.

I use the Weekly Leading Index (WLI) from the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI: http://www.businesscycle.com/) to help form my longer term view of where I believe the US Stock Market is headed. ECRI updates the WLI with a free publicly available news release every Friday morning (http://www.businesscycle.com/news/press/).

The premise of the WLI is that there is some economic data that sends signals (Leading Indicators) about upcoming economic activity that may suggest growth or contraction in the coming quarters. ECRI has built models with data that go back to the early 1900's, so the assumption is that the models are robust and contain not just a descriptive value of the current enviroment, but also a predictive value of the future environment. And isn't it the future that we as traders/investors are most interested in?

If you want to see what kind of economic growth may be ahead of us, then follow ECRI's WLI.