Weekly Leading Index Falls http://www.businesscycle.com/showstory.php?storyID=721 09/24/2004 NEW YORK (Reuters) - A leading index of the U.S. economy dipped in the latest week, and a continued lack of growth in the data shows no end in sight to the current slowdown, a report showed on Friday.
The weekly leading index of independent forecasting group The Economic Cycle Research Institute slipped to 131.4 in the week to Sept. 17 from a downwardly revised 131.6 the prior week, ECRI said in a press release.
ECRI said higher jobless claims and slightly slower growth in industrial commodity prices were offset in part by marginally higher mortgage applications.
The index's annualized growth rate, which smoothes out weekly fluctuations, was unchanged at -0.3 percent.
"The index and its growth rate have been essentially flat for a couple of months, after falling sharply starting in the spring," said Anirvan Banerji, ECRI's director of research.
"That suggests that the economic slowdown we are now seeing is real and there is no end in sight," Banerji told Reuters.
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