2025-11-11
12 分钟If I met you at a cocktail party and I asked you how the US economy is doing right now,
what would you say?
It's actually kind of a hard question to answer.
There are signs that things are going well.
Through the end of October, the S&P 500 was up more than 16% for the year.
Credit card data shows that consumers just keep spending, and the latest GDP numbers were strong.
But there are also signs of weakness.
Prices keep rising.
Consumer sentiment recently fell near record lows.
The jobs market has slowed.
Manufacturing is lagging.
Even the Fed doesn't know where the economy is going,
fueling its debate over whether to keep cutting rates.
Add to that the government shutdown, which has made official data temporarily unavailable,
it makes for a pretty confusing picture.
So some of those in the know are turning to alternative data to help them take the temperature of the economy.
Here's WSJ investing columnist Spencer Jacob.
It really always does make sense to look at alternative indicators.
Most economic indicators that you get from the government are pretty backward looking.
It's old news already, and so it's hard to find things that really give an indication of the future.