LEI Drops for Third Straight Month

The Conference Board said its index of leading economic indicators fell by 0.2% in August, marking the third straight monthly drop.

The index fell to 111.8 in August, with seven of the 10 components, among them weekly initial jobless claim data, vendor performance, new orders for capital nondefense and consumer goods and consumer expectations falling during the month.

Among the declining components were, the New York-based Conference Board said.

The coincident indicators index, an index that displays the current shape of the economy, rose just 0.1% in August to 115.0, the board said.

The index of lagging indicators decreased 0.1% in August to 100.7, the board’s report showed.

The Conference Board sets its indices on 1996 – with that year being 100 for comparison purposes.

The Conference Board is a nonprofit research and business group, with more than 2,700 corporate and other members around the world. Founded in 1916, it took over the job of computing composite economic indexes from the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1995.

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