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The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Economic Indicators RogersEconomics.com |
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The
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Economic Indicators
Web Links and Updates
by Chapter
Chapter 1
Economic Indicators: A
High Impact on Markets and on You
Introduction
from Chapter 1
Ever watched a World Series baseball game with a 3-2 pitch count,
the bases loaded, and 2 out? In game 7? Well, that’s nothing compared to 2 seconds
after the employment situation report comes out. There’s more tension
before—and action afterwards—in the financial markets when a key economic
indicator comes out than during a decade of World Series games. And there’s more money at stake, too.
Before an economic news release, financial traders have their
finger on the trigger to trade as soon as they know whether the economic news
is good or bad. Within seconds after the news, the trade trigger is pulled by
millions of traders and investors. By the time you finish this book, you’ll
know what’s going on in this exciting world. And you’ll also understand how
economic indicators can make or break your retirement savings and even determine
whether you have job!
Ready to change channels from the World
Series to the excitement of economic indicators? Find a comfortable chair, relax, and read
on. And who knows? You might just learn enough to hit a
financial homerun of your own!
Web Links
for Chapter 1
Economic Calendars
This
chapter focuses on the monthly news cycle for economic news and how you can
track the numbers. There are several
basics about indicators you need to know.
How do traders think? What makes
the difference when an indicator update is released and traders hit the sell
button or the buy button? What is the
monthly schedule of economic news and how does its progressive unveiling each
month impact views about the economy?
And what is and why does a “consensus” make or break the markets when
economic indicators are made public?
Chapter 1 answers these questions.
But
for this web addition, the focus is on, how do you “get in the game?” A key task for you is to pick an economic
calendar on the web to track the indicator releases and keep up with the
so-called consensus. Here are links to
some of my favorite economic calendars.
But first, I’ll go along with a little truth in advertising. I work for Econoday and provide economic
commentary each week. So, my favorite
economic web site obviously, is Econoday’s. Others are available.
This
is Econoday’s basic, free version for the
public. A more comprehensive version is available
at Econoday.com by subscription with a free trial available.
Financial Markets
Part
of keeping up with the economy is to watch how economic indicators impact
various financial markets. There are so
many markets that it is hard to list them all.
So, we’ll just hit the highlights.
Equities
or Stock Markets
When
one thinks of financial markets, most initially think of “the stock
market”—although there is no single stock market but many in the U.S. and in
other countries. CIG Economic Indicators
explains many of the key financial markets.
Here are a few of the many links that track stock market indexes and
even individual company stocks. There is
some overlap in sources for links with economic calendars above but the
embedded links go to pages for different topics.
- Bloomberg,
Americas Indexes
- Bloomberg, World
Indexes
- Wall
Street Journal, Stocks Overview
- Nasdaq, Stock Market Indexes
- CNBC Stocks
Bond Yields and
Prices
The
biggest market for bonds is for U.S. Treasury securities—or Treasuries. There are bond markets for corporate bonds,
U.S. government agency debt, state & municipal bonds, and overseas bonds,
among others. But again, the biggest
bond market is for U.S. Treasuries and it is the market you should be able to
track and have a general understanding before moving on to other bond
markets. Bloomberg is a good site to use
for tracking bond prices and yields.
On
Bloomberg’s U.S. Treasuries page, there are nearby links for government bonds
for other major countries.
Currencies
This
link at Bloomberg.com shows a table which is generally called for cross
rates. It shows the value of a currency
expressed in a number of other currencies.
For traders of U.S. currencies, the two key relationships are for the
dollar versus the euro and the dollar versus the yen.
In
recent years, it has become vogue to talk about the currency value of the
dollar in terms of “the dollar index.”
For most currency traders, this means a composite index of currencies
versus the dollar. A specific dollar
index trades on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE found on theICE.com) and
this is what is commonly referred to as the dollar index. The index has components based on the euro,
Japanese yen, British pound, Canadian dollar, Swedish krona
and Swiss franc. Here’s ICE’s page
explaining their dollar index:
While
you can learn much about the dollar index methodology on ICE’s site at
theICE.com, a site that is popular for tracking the dollar index is INO
markets. Here’s their page for tracking
the dollar index during daily trading:
Commodities
As
discussed in CIG Economic Indicators,
commodities are wide ranging, including items such as wheat, gold, oil, copper,
coffee, and sugar. A good starting point
for tracking commodities prices is on Bloomberg.
Energy
commodities probably get more attention than any other group. This includes prices for crude oil and other
commodities such as natural gas. Bloomberg
also tracks spot prices for energy goods.
CIG Economic Indicators discusses the difference between futures prices
and spot prices in Chapter 12, Oil, Gold, and Other Commodities Prices. The below link includes spot prices for
Brent and Cushing crude—probably the two most watched energy prices in the spot
market.
Of
course, if you track oil prices, you need to track the exchange rate of the dollar
since most crude oil is traded in dollars.
Bonus
Material
A
really cool site for tracking individual stocks is Yahoo!Finance. You
can even download historical data for company stock prices.
To
get historical stock price data for a company, type in a company stock ticker
symbol in the quote dialogue entry box and then after the company page comes
up, click the “Historical Prices” link.
After the data pops up in a web page, you can click at link at the
bottom to download to Excel.
What’s
New?
Want
to learn what goes into stock market indexes?
Dow-Jones has a number of web pages that explain what companies go into
various Dow-Jones indexes. And the
companies that are in various stock market indexes changes from time to
time. Most companies that create
composite (multiple companies) stock market indexes, delete companies and add
companies in the index on a regular (often yearly) basis.
Here’s
where you can find out about what goes into the Dow-Jones Industrial Average
(also known as Dow 30), the Dow-Jones transportation (or transport), and Dow
Jones Utilities indexes.
Return
to Chapter List for Web Pages, The Complete Idiot’s
Guide to Economic Indicators
Return to Economic
Indicators Site Map
Back
to Home Page for RogersEconomics.com
Email comments or suggestions to RMRogers@mindspring.com
