I started calculating my QCI (Quick Coinciding Index) back in 1986, when my (first) PC only had 220K of memory. There wasn't enough memory to calculate a full coinciding index with several components on that primitive machine. I had to write programs that rolled matrices out of memory onto the disk to do the calculation of my US coinciding index, and then roll them back when I needed them, and that, combined with the slow speed of the microchip, meant that the calculation of the full coinciding index was very slow. Hence the quick coinciding index.
It's nothing special, just an average of non-agricultural employment, industrial production and the volume of retail sales. The close fit with GDP goes back decades.
The chart shows the QCI through June 2023. If the relationship between real GDP and the QCI holds up, expect GDP to reach zero YOY in Q2. Not quite a recession. Yet.
Same timescale comment applies as with the previous post.
[Update: The "flash" estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggests GDP grew in the second quarter, by a strongish 2.4% annualised. The perils of forecasting a single data point instead of a trend! Still, this is a provisional estimate, and I've seen quite large shifts between the first stab at the latest quarter's growth and subsequent estimates when better underlying data become available.]
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