Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Chemical activity still strong



Here's another update of an indicator I've been highlighting for the past several months. The American Chemistry Council's Chemical Activity Barometer (see chart above) hit a new all-time high this month, rounding out a significant pickup in the second half of this year, and suggesting that the economy will register stronger growth in the months to come.


As the chart above shows, the year over year gain in the 3-mo. moving average of the CAB has tended to lead a similar gain in industrial production, which has been weak for some time now.

HT: Calculated Risk, which has been covering this issue in greater detail for some time now.

1 comment:

Benjamin Cole said...

I am always happy to see a positive economic indicator, however I wonder if this particular indicator is a little rosy as we are experiencing extremely low natural gas prices which feed into chemicals of all sorts.

Chemicals get a boost.

But with the Fed tightening and a strong dollar we may see smaller economic growth next year then we hope.