
Ask HN: Favorite Real-Time Economic Indicators? - supahfly_remix
With some places starting to leave quarantine in various forms, I&#x27;m looking for indicators to get a sense of when the economy is starting to recover.<p>Does anyone have any favorite real-time (or near real-time) economic indicators?  One example is opentable&#x27;s &quot;State of the Restaurant Industry&quot; (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opentable.com&#x2F;state-of-industry), which shows the previous day&#x27;s bookings rate.  I&#x27;m not looking for ones global in scope, just ones that are short-term and not obvious (such as stock market indices, oil prices).  Other examples could be traffic, electricity loadings, etc.<p>Many indicators published by governments are lagging indicators (e.g., unemployment numbers, WARN notices).  I&#x27;m curious to get a sense if people are starting to return to normal life.
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programd
For the global economy, the Baltic Dry Index. It's a benchmark for the price
of moving major raw materials by sea. Surprisingly, it's at about the same
value as last year at this time - so not horrible - and seems to have bottomed
out last month. Good news overall.

[https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic](https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic)

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supahfly_remix
That's a nice one.

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1cvmask
Best indicator is energy consumption of businesses and industry.

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supahfly_remix
Good suggestion. Do you have any publicly accessible links?

Previously, I looked at Texas grid which publishes data
hourly([http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/load/load_hist/](http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/load/load_hist/)),
but I didn't really understand what I was looking at nor what a good baseline
is.

