Currently, a lot of attention is paid to the yield curve and how the Fed might react to recessionary risk. Claudia Sahm of the Federal Reserve takes a different tack, she has detailed a novel way to both forecast recessions and make them less severe. Her findings are helpful to investors too. She details a sound metric for tracking recessions early. It's to look for a +0.5% rise in the unemployment rate relative to the unemployment rate's past 12-month low. This metric has called each of the seven recessions back to 1970, never getting it wrong over that period. That's a good success rate, and comparable with the ... (full story)