Using Economic Indicators to Improve Investment Analysis, 2nd Edition

Book Description

An A-to-Z guide to economic indicators - what they are and what they really mean

Covering all major economic indicators, from GDP and personal income to government spending and employment cost index, this revised and expanded edition of Using Economic Indicators to Improve Investment Analysis explains what key economic measurements are, how to read and interpret them, and, most importantly, how to use them to make better, more informed financial, trading, and investing decisions.

"Evelina Tainer has created the ultimate guidebook for market watchers and investors. I never keep it more than an arm's-length away. I also encourage my students to read the book, as it provides an invaluable link between economic theory and its application to the real world." -Maureen J. Maguire Senior Economist and Principal, NationsBanc Montgomery Securities LLC Lecturer, University of California Extension Program, University of California at Berkeley

"Using Economic Indicators to Improve Investment Analysis is a must for any journalist, investor, or student seeking to interpret macroeconomic data. Tainer anticipates basic questions and provides clear, thorough answers while explaining industry-specific jargon. The well-organized format makes her guide an easy-to-use reference tool." -Kristi Bahrenburg Reporter, Dow Jones Newswires

"Evelina Tainer has produced the definitive user-friendly guide to understanding and using what is arguably the most important body of information for investors in the United States. It is required reading for everyone at Market News Service. For those looking to make intelligent investment decisions, the information in this book is essential." -Michael J. Conner CEO, Market News Service, Inc.

Economic indicators are anything but "just numbers"- they are the keys to unlocking invaluable information about market behavior. Read and interpreted accurately, they can lead to successful trading, prudent policymaking, smart consumership, and profitable investing. Getting the most out of these important signs, however, requires a firm grasp of what they signify and what they really mean. Using Economic Indicators to Improve Investment Analysis -now revised and expanded -gives you the handle necessary to understand and effectively use a wide range of essential economic measurements.

Covering all the major indicators reported by private and government statistical agencies -including the consumer price index, the employment situation, retail sales, and housing starts -this comprehensive resource provides full descriptions of indicators and what they represent, their impact on the direction of interest rates, exchange rates, and the stock market, and the hows and whys of market reaction. Most importantly, the Second Edition offers practical guidelines for gearing your investment strategies to these ever-changing economic statistics.

Written in clear, nontechnical terms and clearly organized by sectors of the economy, this accessible guide:
* Takes a close look at GDP, with an overview of the macroeconomic framework using the standard national income accounting methodology
* Compares and contrasts consumer sector indicators to distinguish which series are more reliable and consistent
* Differentiates between all measures of inflation, and makes the key distinction between inflation in the goods market and inflation in the services market
* Explores foreign market indicators, including the monthly and quarterly indicators for the foreign exchange, domestic bond, and equity markets
* Features revealing "Did You Know?" tidbits, and cautionary "Watch Out" sections that highlight common and uncommon quirks, as well as special factors unique to specific indicators
* Contains new material on the Federal Reserve-how it works and its policymaking system

Cutting through the ambiguity that often surrounds coverage of economic indicators in the business sections and the financial press, this is essential reading for anyone looking to make sense of vital economic figures.

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Praise for Using Economic Indicators to Improve Investment Analysis THIRD EDITION ""Once again, Evelina Tainer has cleared the fog of economic confusion. Her work deciphers and encapsulates the metrics employed by professional speculators in the magnitude of George Soros and Edwin Lefvre. This thesis is a requisite desktop reference for every market participant."" John Alda, Managing Director, Alda Macro Fund Management ""Tainer's latest book is a tour de force through the world of esoteric economic numbers and jargon. Written in layman's terms, her latest book can be understood by anyone interested in navigating the world of professional economics."" Kathleen Camilli, founder and Principal of Camilli Economics, LLC ""A virtual bible of how economic indicators are constructed and used. Important tidbits of history are mixed with present-day nuances to explain why we should care about all the economic indicators."" Allen Grommet, Senior Economist, Cambridge Consumer Credit Index ""Tainer has produced an essential reference source for any economist and public policy analyst interested in the careful review of economic releases and their impact on capital markets. This work reflects her long experience in the profession and her feel for the financial market. I especially enjoyed her market reaction and key points sections on some of my favorite and sometimes infamous indicators."" John E. Silvia, Chief Economist, Wachovia Corporation ""This book is an indispensable resource for anyone that wants a practical understanding of the economy and how it is measured. The information is clear, concise, and will help investors at all levels leverage the vast amount of economic data available."" Jesse Harriott, PhD, Vice President of Research, Monster Worldwide, Inc.

Customer Reviews:

Fairly Good Introduction.......2006-07-12

From my point of view, this book consists of three parts. Part one, that is, Chapters 1-6, devoted to national accounts and their indicators. Part two, that is, Chapters 7-9, devoted to inflation and inflation related labor and production indicators, and finally part three, Chapters 10-11, is devoted to the central bank and treasury systems. The investment analysis part of this book seems to be the market reaction parts mentioned at the end of each section. Yet they seem to me a little too simplistic for the real world. In the real world, we mostly observe growth cycles rather than business cycles. In other words, business cycle recessions rather than growth cycle recessions are depicted in market reaction parts in this book. Nevertheless this is a good streetwise ECON 101 book. As a final note; although not updated, its second edition seems to me better.

A dictionary of economic indicators.......2002-08-23

This book might be a good compliment to an existing library, but I didn't find it very useful myself. I thought the comment of an earlier review's title, 'A Perfect Complement to an academic finance text!' fairly accurate. If you want to know what the talking heads on the financial news are touting, this is an excellent guide.

In other words, if you have bought into the conventional econometrics of the day, whatever that is, this is your guidebook. It ought to help get through a class, but outside the ivory tower, I'm not sure it will be much help.

Personally, the author didn't help me connect the dots. What do these indicators imply for the GNP 2, 3 or 4 years down the road? What connections do foreign indicators have with domestic ones?

These questions are not answered. It's just a dictionary. You get the nominal description, the publishing authority, a bit about why the authority thinks their indicator useful and maybe a few sample numbers. That is it. If you like academic economics or ever have to make a presentation to some government officials, this is probably an exceptional service, though.

Bringing theory to life - an easy read.......2001-11-01

This is not only an excellent reference source, but also a very interesting book. People who are not experts in the fields of economics or finance will have no problem grasping the concepts. I keep it in the office for reference and from time to time pick it up to read up on different topics. I've been impressed with Tainer's ability to make these concepts so easy to understand. Her "Did you know? and Market Reaction" sections are also very interesting and provide an inside view as to how government policymakers and financial marketmakers shape the economy in ways that are very relevant to the average consumer. I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a good reference book or wants to complement his studies in this field. I think that college students can benefit a great deal from it. For those of you who watch CNBC or CNNfn constantly, you stand to benefit the most from a book like this as it will not only teach you the cause and effect of important economic indicators that are put on the screen on a daily basis, but what's more important, the reasons why they impact the economy and the markets the way they do.

A Perfect Complement to an academic finance text!.......1998-12-30

Anticipating a number of delays while traveling over the holidays recently, I picked up a few books from Amazon.com; one I never put down.

Dr. Evelina Tainer has managed, in a succinct manner, to offer academicians (particularly those without practical experience in the world of finance)a way to communicate ideas to students that is compelling and interesting.

I more carefully read about her background only after finishing her book. It make perfect sense that this book was written by an author who has worked in both academic and professional circles. Dr. Tainer integrates material from both perspectives in a meaningful way.

I was particularly fond of the "Did you know" sections where Dr. Tainer fine-tunes a specific notion or concept.

Her discussion of "Seasonal Adjustment" helped to clarify a nubmer of questions that once clouded my understanding.

Academic texts rarely allocate space (for obvious reasons) to details regarding economic indicators. This is where Dr. Tainer's book picks up to bring to light the relevance of the indicators to investment analysis.

I can readily see how Dr. Tainer's, "Using Economic Indicators to Improve Investment Analysis," would be a welcome text in the classroom -- as a stand alone text for an elective course or as supplement to other required texts. I think that students will take to its lucid approach.

Book Description

Legal thought in this country has always focused on the rules rather than on the persons affected by the rules. Persons and Masks of the Law restores the balance by taking a person-centered view of the law. The author shows how even great jurists have chosen the "masks of the law" over persons, his surprising examples being Thomas Jefferson, George Wythe, Benjamin Cardozo, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.--four of the greatest lawyers of the United States.
Noonan discusses how the concept of property, applied to a person, is a perfect mask since no trace of human identity remains. An auction of slaves in Virginia, the takeover of a banana plantation in Costa Rica, and an accident on the Long Island railroad are the famous cases involving these four legal giants. The stories of the litigations at three different periods of our history provide and new and powerful analyses of American law. This book, breaking through the formalism in which jurisprudence is enshrined, offers a new vision of law and represents a call for reform in the education and even behavior of lawyers.

Customer Reviews:

Scholarly Analysis of an American Legal Phenomenom.......2004-05-11

Combining a fascinating legal analysis with legal history, [now Senior Judge] John Noonan has written a fine book. Tracing the jurisprudence of some major legal minds from three different periods in American history, Noonan demonstrates how a preoccupation with LAW as a detached set of rules with a life of its own can lead to the obscuring of the human element in law.

Rules are clearly necessary to an orderly society and to the adjudication of disputes between parties, but rules are conceived of in the minds of people and are applied by people to cases and controversies involving people. An overemphasis upon law as a detached science of rules can allow for the creation of rules that obscure the humanity of people who are subjected to them. These sorts of rules Noonan describes as "masks." (Masks are to be distinguished from "roles," which people assume, but which they are not consumed by.)

Noonan's chronicling of George Wythe and (his student) Thomas Jefferson's legal involvements with the old slave codes provides a stark example of how masks have been used in the history of American law. That section was particularly interesting from a scholarly and historical standpoint, as Noonan describes them in all their utter brutishness, proceeding to delve into the (hypocritical) political, economic and social purposes for which they were created.

Also interesting is Noonan's analysis of Oliver Wendell Holmes' legal thinking and how that thinking was employed in the U.S. Supreme Court case of American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co. (1909). In this reviewer's opinion, there is greater moral ambiguity in the case of sovereign immunity than there is with chattel slavery, but Holmes clearly employed a mask in the American Banana case. Noonan does a fine job of describing the backdrop to the case and all the major players involved in the litigation.

Finally, Noonan discusses Cardozo's masking of the plaintiff in the infamous Palsgraf case from the New York Court of Appeals. This was fun to read, as Palsgraf is one of those cases all law students read in their first-year torts classes.

It would probably prove too much to say that this book has appeal for a wide audience. In all likelihood, only those who are seriously interested in legal scholarship and legal history will find it of interest. Much of the analysis takes place at a high level of abstraction. But given that the book is originally based upon a prestigious serious of law lectures, it should satisfy its intended audience.

Book Description

In the aftermath of the stock market crash, Irving Fisher pointed to the electrification of the U.S. industry as one of the underlying causes of the stock market boom. Earlier, in 1927, Brookings Institution economists had lamented the scant attention energy had received from economists. Today, some 60 years later, power remains the forgotten factor input. In this book, the author incorporates energy into the corpus of economic analysis. Unlike previous attempts, which were mostly theoretical, this work generates testable predictions. The result is a model of production based on the two universal factor inputs--broadly defined energy and broadly defined organization. Once the model of production is developed, the book then tests an empirical model with data from U.S., German, and Japanese manufacturing. The results are used to reexamine the role of energy in productivity slowdown. When the empirically and theoretically correct model of production is used, the Solow residual disappears: growth in manufacturing value added is fully accounted for by growth in energy, capital, and labor.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding Resource for a Sales Writing Tips.......2004-02-10

I was absolutely amazed at this collection of sales letters. For many different sales situations, strategy and focus are required. This book simplified the process greatly and put our firm in closer step with our customers' expectations. We are making big sales and creating an even bigger reputation for oursealves. This book is a must for any sales reference library.

SALES ARE SKYROCKETING.......1999-05-28

ON BEHALF OF MYSELF, SABRINA MCCOY AND COLLEAGUES, SANDY STEELE & PAMELA DE LA MATA, AT LOUIS PRINTING SERVICES, WE ARE SENDING OUR CONGRATULATIONS TO RHONDA HARRIS AND ANN MCINTYRE . THIS BOOK GAVE US NEW DIRECTION IN OUR SALES COMMUNICATION WITH OUR CLIENTS. THE GUIDELINES THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE BOOK ARE FABULOUS ESPECIALLY WHEN TRYING TO UNLOCK THE DOOR ON NEW CLIENTS. THIS BOOK ENLIGHTENS A SALESPERSON BY GIVING THEM HOPE & DETERMINATION TO SHOOT FOR THE STARS.

Customer Reviews:

average.......2004-03-21

very informative for young adults and others new to credit. activities and exercises in the book are somewhat elementary but reinforce major ideas

The Answer Book for Customer Service Managers
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The Answer Book for Customer Service Managers
Anna Maria Trusky
Manufacturer: Aspen Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Ring-bound

Customer Service | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Marketing | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0876227760

Answer Book for Customer Service Managers
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Answer Book for Customer Service Managers

Manufacturer: Aspen Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Customer Service | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0735527482

Book Description

Cross-border regions are newly emerging social spaces stretching across national borders. Globalization makes national borders more permeable and leads to a rearrangement of economic and political interactions. This is particularly pronounced within supra-regional blocs featuring specific internal border regimes. The ensuing opportunities are increasingly seized to create border-spanning discourses and institutions. This is illustrated in the book by a range of experts analyzing cross-border regions in Europe, America, East Asia and Africa.

Globalization, regionalization and cross-border regions [A book review from: Political Geography]

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Globalization, regionalization and cross-border regions [A book review from: Political Geography]
J. Shen
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000RQZTTO

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Political Geography, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Bending the Kuznets Curve: Wrenching & Levelling Forces During Agricultural Transformation in Taiwan & Chile (Lund Studies in Economic History, 25)
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Bending the Kuznets Curve: Wrenching & Levelling Forces During Agricultural Transformation in Taiwan & Chile (Lund Studies in Economic History, 25)
Martin Andersson
Manufacturer: Almquiest & Wiksell Intl
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Economic Policy & Development | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
International | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9122020268

Book Description

This is a Ph.D. dissertation. What are the effects of growth on equality in a long-term perspective? What are the effects of different patterns of equality on subsequent growth? And why are these questions relevant for the understanding of economic development? These are the overriding questions posed in this study. They are addressed in the context of long-term change from economic backwardness to modern economic growth by examining the processes of agricultural transformation of two successful growth achievers - Taiwan and Chile. In recent day empirical examinations of the growth-equality relationship, the so-called Kuznets-curve - that inequality initially increases before it declines - has been rejected on the grounds that the relationship does not appear in such systematic fashion.

In assessing this latter-day comprehension, the author argues that the thrust of the Kuznets-curve is not its shape but the underlying forces at play during their agricultural transformations. In the initially relatively equal income distribution in Taiwan, the dynamics of homogenous demand eased the wrenching forces of structural change despite population pressure and forceful industrialization. Chile, on the other hand, starting from a wrenched situation, experienced aggravated wrenching and delayed dynamic change due to its lack of universal access to markets. When dynamic change eventually took place - after decades of forced institutional change - leveling forces outpaced the wrenching forces.

Book Description

This law handbook contains information on basic business legislation, laws and regulatoins affecting export-import, business, foreign investments, property rights, taxation and banking.

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Mauritania Business Law Handbook
Emerging Markets Investment Center
Manufacturer: International Business Publications, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0739705091

Book Description

This law handbook contains information on basic business legislation, laws and regulatoins affecting export-import, business, foreign investments, property rights, taxation and banking.

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Mauritania Business Law Handbook
USA International Business Publications
Manufacturer: Intl Business Pubns USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Exports & Imports | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Business Law | Reference | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | International Law | Law | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0739746146

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