Dashboard update

The latest version of the US macro and markets dashboard is now available. In this update, I’ve appended a table which shows the value of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis other currencies. Notable developments include the U.S. dollar strengthening against the Canadian dollar earlier in the week, and the South African Rand (ZAR) weakening by more than three percent against the dollar over on Friday.

Elsewhere in the dashboard, crude oil prices have fallen further, the personal savings rate climbed to 5.6 percent, and the unemployment rate remained flat at 5 percent. The S&P 500 fell 78 points during the week. The effective federal funds rate has been near zero since late 2008, so it will be interesting to see how markets react to the outcome of the next FOMC meeting. Most economists predict a rate hike of 0.25 percent.

The current account balance and the business cycle

A recent assignment involved examining movements in a U.S. macroeconomic variable through the business cycle. I took a simplified look at the current account balance, from the perspective of consumption and demand for imports. I hope it serves as a helpful example of how LaTeX can be used for short reports.

U.S. Current Account Balance – Empirical Exercise

Macro and Markets Dashboard

To monitor for interesting economic developments, I’ve created a dashboard of 24 macroeconomic and market-related indicators. The wide variety of indicators include GDP growth, the trade-weighted dollar, food prices, and U.S. government bond yield spreads.

All indicators are retrieved from Quandl using Stata, so updates take only two clicks. Please check out the dashboard and send me your feedback.