The Unassuming Economist

An intriguing analysis by the SEI Knowledge Center on forecasting recessions:

“To explore this possibility, we looked at the last 13 recessions in the US dating back to 1937. US data was used due to availability of a longer history; we believe the core conclusions of the analysis should be the same for any geography or market. We considered a range of sell-and-buy scenarios surrounding the official start and end dates of each recession, as determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (or NBER, a private, non-profit, non-partisan organisation). The timing of our hypothetical decisions to sell out of the market and buy back into the market varied by up to eight quarters before and after each actual recession start and end date. This gave us a grand total of 2,577 scenarios to consider, as highlighted in Exhibit 1.”

Exhibit 1: Endless Possibilities

Source: Bloomberg, SEI