You hear it all the time. The GDP numbers came in. Inflation is up. The PMI dropped. Markets reacted.
But what do these numbers actually mean? And why do traders, investors, and policymakers care so much about them?
John Maynard Keynes once talked about “animal spirits.” He meant the spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction. Not cold, rational calculation. Just a gut feeling that says “let’s go” or “let’s wait.”
This is post 3 in a series on Trading Economics: A Guide to Economic Statistics for Practitioners & Students by Trevor Williams and Victoria Turton (Wiley Finance, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-118-76641-5).
This is post 4 in a series on Trading Economics: A Guide to Economic Statistics for Practitioners & Students by Trevor Williams and Victoria Turton (Wiley Finance, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-118-76641-5).
Thomas Malthus once warned that population growth would always outstrip the economy’s ability to keep up. People would multiply faster than food could be grown and goods could be produced.
In the last post, we looked at the big productivity puzzle. Record employment, weak economy. More jobs, less output per person.
Milton Friedman once said: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”
That’s one of the most quoted lines in all of economics. And it’s a great starting point for understanding what inflation actually is, where it comes from, and why it matters so much.
So you know what inflation is and what causes it. But how do you actually measure it?
Turns out there’s more than one way. And the differences between those measurements matter a lot more than you’d think.
This is post 9 in a series on Trading Economics: A Guide to Economic Statistics for Practitioners & Students by Trevor Williams and Victoria Turton (Wiley Finance, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-118-76641-5).
This is post 10 in a series on Trading Economics: A Guide to Economic Statistics for Practitioners & Students by Trevor Williams and Victoria Turton (Wiley Finance, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-118-76641-5).
The 2008 financial crisis broke a lot of things. Banks failed. Markets crashed. Millions lost their jobs.
But it also broke something less obvious: the idea that light-touch regulation was good enough to keep the financial system safe.
Adam Smith put it simply: “Every man lives by exchanging.”
That one sentence captures something fundamental about how economies work. People trade. Countries trade. And the countries that trade the most tend to be the richest.
This is post 13 in a series on Trading Economics: A Guide to Economic Statistics for Practitioners & Students by Trevor Williams and Victoria Turton (Wiley Finance, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-118-76641-5).
This is the final post in a 14-part series on Trading Economics: A Guide to Economic Statistics for Practitioners & Students by Trevor Williams and Victoria Turton (Wiley Finance, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-118-76641-5).