Economic and stock-market cycles affect companies, individuals, and investors in every industry. However, the confusing barrage of anecdotal and conflicting indicators we face every day, week, and month renders it impossible for managers and investors to see where the economy is heading in time to take corrective action.

In Ahead of the Curve, a thirty-five-year Wall Street veteran unveils a new forecasting method and working model that puts these indicators into context and will enable managers and investors to understand and predict the economic cycles and related stock-market movements that control their businesses and financial fates. In this book, you will see that the problem with current forecasting models lies not in the data, but rather in the lack of a clear framework for presenting the data in context and reading it correctly.

The book

• Explains critical economic indicators in nontechnical language,
• Identifies and documents the recurring cause-and-effect relationships that consistently predict turning points in the economy, and
• Provides the tools, including highly readable charts, that managers and investors need to position themselves ahead of cyclical upturns and downturns.

Following 3 SIMPLE RULES will allow the reader to materially improve his or her ability both to monitor the key leading indicators of economic activity and the stock market and place these indicators in a chronology that greatly simplifies forecasting.

Economic events are not as random and unpredictable as they seem. This book will help readers recognize and react to signs of change that their rivals don’t see—and win a sizeable competitive advantage.

About the Author:
Joseph H. Ellis was a partner of Goldman Sachs and was ranked for eighteen consecutive years by Institutional Investor magazine as Wall Street’s #1 retail-industry analyst.

About the Website:
This website contains 20 of the key charts from Ahead of the Curve, continually updated, so that readers will be able to apply the book’s key insights to today’s latest reported data.

10/3/15: Charts updated with data current to 10/3/15.

2/3/2006: Joseph Ellis interviewed on NPR’s Marketplace Money

2/03/2006: Part 2 of John Mauldin’s Thoughts from the Frontline column (registration required)

1/7/2006: Part 1 of John Mauldin’s Thoughts from the Frontline column about Ahead of the Curve

Read an excerpt from the book, "Redefining Economic Downturns," in the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge newsletter

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