Interest rates and spreads as leading indicators An alternative approach to extracting information from financial markets is to examine a range of asset prices and yields to determine whether they are useful as leading indicators of economic developments. Financial prices meet several key criteria for being useful leading indicators.
For example, gravity was used to move goods vertically in the steam environment, and that setup did not initially change with the advent of electric power. Only much later -- when horizontal factories, newly designed for optimal use of electric power, began to dominate our industrial system -- did productivity clearly accelerate.