Recession indicator with perfect track record flashing red
By Jonathan GarberPublished August 14, 2019
The yield curve is blaring a recession warning.
The spread between the U.S. 2-year and 10-year yields on Wednesday turned negative for the first time since 2007. Such a development has occurred ahead of each and every U.S. recession of the last 50 years, sometimes leading by as much as 24 months.
“Historically, the 2-10 has had better predictive ability of recession than equities,” Sri Kumar, president of the Santa Monica, California-based Sri-Kumar Global Strategies, told Fox Business.
“If you depended on equities to tell you whether you are entering into a recession you did not do well. For example, October, November of 2006, exactly one year before the Great Recession began, the 2-10- inverted. Equities did well in the first half of 2008 when we were in a recession and oil prices hit a peak in May of 2008 when we were very much in a recession.