Part 1: Introduction
Chapter 1
The Economy Is Running the Data Is
Walking and Trends versus Cycles
Sending a document cross-town, trading millions of shares of
stock, ordering groceries, and manufacturing a car all happen
much faster than they have at any time in the past. The
acceleration in the speed at which you can get things done in
this era of digitally driven innovation is not like anything seen
before. New technology is also getting adopted much more
quickly than at any time in the past. If everything is moving
with such greater speed, economic theories and measurements
need to keep pace. Should traditional business and credit cycles
move faster than in the past? Why should investors react to
data such as gross domestic product (GDP), which was
developed in the 1930s and contains data that is sometimes six
months old if the economy has evolved while waiting for the
results? If you are an investor, of any kind, you need to rethink
how to use popular economic data and traditional economic
theories, consider other newer data points to use and
reevaluate the relevance of all this data that is available in the
current environment.
This era of technical and societal revolution is impacting
how investment decisions need to be approached. First, these
developments are so extreme and rapid that historical
economic data is not as good a tool as it once was when trying