Leading indicators?

 

Today the stock market went crazy once again. "Leading Indicators" is made up of such secret and exciting components such as market's development last month, bond market developments, and a lot of other actually publically available variables. Guess who "positively surprised". Well, the stock and bond markets. How can the realized stock market performance surprise? At least that is what the media wanted you to believe. Smarter money sold the figure.

A more interesting number is consumer sentiment, charted below together with private consumption. "Look down below!"

What is the value added by an equity analyst?

The chart below seems to indicate that analysts' forecasts merely are a moving average of actually reported earnings. Thus no predictive value whatsoever. Note how the analysts at turning points in the cycle, stubbornly continues to believe that (especially) the rise will continue.