Just in case there is anyone who believes that there still will be financial markets in 6 - 9 months [see Dimitri’s recent posts about the upcoming melt down: one, two, three, four, five] I wanted to introduce an instrument that has traditionally be a good leading indicator of future trends that can affect the market: The CEO Confidence Survey.

“Taking into consideration the value of an accurate predictor for GDP and interest rates, the CEO Confidence Survey proves to be a rich resource for the trader. With sentiment readings for both service and manufacturing industries, the CEO Confidence Survey allows traders to target their investment research into areas with higher readings.”

Quoted from this excellent article on Investopedia.com. They have a chart that demonstrates the relationship between the CEO Survey and the GDP and interest rates, so if you know how to play stocks that either follow or react to these benchmarks the CEO Confidence Survey could give you a reasonable glimpse of the future.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 30th, 2005 at 11:35 am and is filed under Investing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.