Russell Updates Economic Indicators Dashboard

The changes shift the series of macroeconomic indicators underlying the dashboard to ensure the tool remains relevant and valuable to advisers and their clients, Russell explains. The dashboard initially launched with eight indicators—including corporate debt, market volatility, interest rates, mortgage delinquencies, core inflation, employment growth, consumer spending and economic expansion. With the new update, the residual mortgage delinquency and corporate debt metrics were replaced by the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index and the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield.

Russell says the adjusted lineup of indicators is more appropriate as the U.S. economy continues to normalize and strengthen after the 2008-09 financial crisis. In addition, Russell says some of the indicators have also shifted to consider new data sources that are more commonly cited in the investment industry. For example, the consumer spending indicator is now represented by the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index, and the inflation indicator is represented by the U.S. CPI Urban Consumers Index.

Russell says there will also be more frequent data updates moving forward, and the “typical range” for each indicator will now be defined as values falling within one standard deviation on either side of the mean for all values of the indicator.

First launched in 2009, the indicators dashboard tool is available on Russell’s Helping Advisors site.