If the U.S jobless rate deteriorates to 9.3%, it's historically ineviteable that the U.S will contract and become likely to enter a technical recession IMO.
Currently, it is 9.1%. It was 9.2% in June.
A fair idea is to keep an eye out on the oil price too. It's too high atm and needs to come off.
Private payrolls, ISM factory data, retails sales, non farmroll data, are also other factors to keep an eye on.
However, the main game is *confidence* atm.
As a brief note, when you read some of the outlandish threads in recent weeks on HC, with some predicting this and that where the dow will fall up to 500 points every night, that BHP is doomed and that we'll never enter a bull market again in some decades, it's food for thought. It's becoming a point of ridicule.
The markets are only a sidehow to real global economic fundamentals. Markets, and therefore any pictorial display of global markets, are driven by global key efficient economic indicators, not by layman technical indicators that have become so viral in recent years.
Perhaps the reason why the tech. "playfulness" is so prevalent in on-line chatter nowadays is that retail on-line trading has become so accessible nowadays. The growing tens of millions of internet pushers who are valiantly trying to make a quid out of it via blogs, software, books, and seminars have been no surprise. I personally believe the major reason why peoele play with it is that very few have proplerly explained the variables that truly dictate a market to non-economists which is understandable to the growing retail base, however, that's how it is.
Anyway, keep an eye out on the U.S jobless rate. I personally rate a U.S recession to be around a 30% chance atm but very slow growth from the U.S & Europe looks likely in 2012 (0 -1%).
I believe a good chance exists that the US economy will show signs of a pulse leading into Christmas, as we have, not withstanding any unknown events of significance.
