Macro Tape

It shows the last published reading of each main US economic series. It is one of the Market Radar screens. Open Market Radar

At a glance

• What this screen is. A list of the main US economic numbers. Each row shows the reading that was published most recently.
• The date is the period, not the release day. Every row is stamped with the stretch of time the figure covers. A news story about inflation on Tuesday is usually about a month that ended three weeks earlier.
• Reading a row. Take one row from left to right. The reading is the latest published number, in that series' own units. Some are percentages, some are index points, some are counts in thousands, some are dollar amounts. The unit is printed beside the number where the series has one.
• The other columns. The change is how far the reading moved from the reading before it, in those same units. The year on year column compares this period with the same period a year earlier, as a percentage. The last column is the period the figure covers.
• Some cells are empty. Not every series carries a change or a year on year figure. Where there is none, the cell shows a dash.
• Click a row to see its past. Selecting a row draws a chart of that series' recent readings at the top of the screen. A line under the chart says how many readings it covers.
• Whose numbers these are. The official statistics agencies produce them. They are the published figures, not ours.
• What we add. The readings are the published figures, reproduced as they stand. The change and year on year columns are worked out from those figures. We add no view of our own.
• No reading added. No figure here is called hot, cooling, strong or weak. There is no sentence about what any of it means for markets. Key difference: the Release Calendar is what is due next. This screen is what was last said.

What it shows

The rows fall into these groups.

• Prices.
  • Core CPI. Consumer prices leaving out food and energy, which jump around.
  • CPI, all items. Consumer prices across everything in the basket. This is the one usually called headline.
• Jobs.
  • Unemployment rate. The share of the labour force looking for work.
  • Nonfarm payrolls. Jobs on company payrolls, counted in thousands.
  • Initial jobless claims. New applications for unemployment insurance in the week.
• Policy rate.
  • Fed funds rate. The overnight rate banks charge each other, which the Fed steers.
• Activity.
  • Retail sales. What Americans spent at retailers in the month.
  • Industrial production. Output of factories, mines and utilities.
  • Housing starts. Homes where building began, counted in thousands at a yearly rate.
  • Real GDP. Output of the whole economy, after stripping out price rises.
• Money and mood.
  • Money supply, M2. Cash and near cash held by the public.
  • Consumer sentiment. A University of Michigan survey of how households feel. Two market-priced lines sit on Market Mood instead of here.
• The yield curve. The gap between two US government borrowing rates, one long and one short.
• Credit spreads. What riskier companies pay to borrow above the US government. Both of those are prices that trade every day. Everything on this screen is a statistic an agency releases on a set date.

What is deliberately not here

• No schedule of coming releases. That has its own screen now. The agencies announce those dates themselves and we copy them across to the Release Calendar. We never work a date out from how often past releases arrived.
• No beat or miss. Calling a figure a beat or a miss needs a published number from economists. We do not hold one for these series.
• No view. Covered above, under At a glance. Nothing on this screen grades a figure.

Using it with discipline

• These numbers get changed later. Several of these series are revised after they are first published, sometimes by a lot. Revised is the agencies' own word for it. Payrolls are revised the most. The screen shows the value that stands for each period today. That is not the number first announced when the release came out.
• Consumer prices come out as an index. An index is a running score with no meaning on its own. The year on year column turns it into the inflation percentage people quote.
• Frequency differs. Claims are weekly. Most of the rest are monthly. Real GDP is quarterly. The period column is where you see which.

Frequently asked questions

Are these Ohey's numbers? No. They are the official published series, reproduced as they stand. Why is a figure I saw in the news not here? There are two cases. If the series is here, look at the period column. A period older than the one in the news means we have not taken the new release in yet. If there is no row for it at all, this screen does not carry that series. Does this screen hold anything of Ohey's own? No. It reproduces public statistics and nothing else.

Related panes

• Release Calendar, the announced dates on which these series next update.
• Market Mood, the market-priced side of the same question. It updates daily rather than monthly, and it holds the yield curve and credit spread readings.
• Market Conditions, the model's own reading of the volatility environment.