20 years of forecasting success Lombard Street Research was founded in 1989 by Tim Congdon CBE and quickly established its reputation as a leading provider of independent macroeconomic research. Our consistent aim has been to provide accurate economic forecasts in order to improve the investment thinking and strategic decisions of financial institutions, banks and corporations worldwide.

Our economists A research company is only as strong as its people, and at Lombard Street Research we can boast some of the most original, rigorous and consistently accurate comment and analysis on the world's markets.

Our team of economists has a breadth of specialities that gives us a comprehensive grasp of global economic trends, and an individual depth of knowledge and experience that affords us an unrivalled perspective on economic events.

Methodology The key foundation of our research is monetary economics. Fundamental analysis of trends in money and credit, banking systems and flows-of-funds provide unique insights into economic developments and into likely movements of financial asset prices.

We also employ proprietary leading indicators to help generate forecasts for economic growth in all of the major economies of the world.

The Lombard Street Research leading indicator indices forecast real GDP relative to trend about a year in advance. These indices are based on the principle that some aspects of economic activity can be used to predict broad trends in the economy. Each leading indicator index consists of seven components. The components are typically the following:

a broad money measure, deflated by a price index a measure of future activity in the construction industry, either order book trends or building permits or similar retail sales of new passenger cars a measure of manufacturing activity, such as domestic orders for consumer goods, new orders to manufacturing, the stocks/delveries ratio or similar interest rates a measure of business sentiment, usually a business survey measuring expected output over the next 3-4 months some other measure of business or consumer sentiment The actual components for each country vary, depending on how well indicators have shown themselves capable of predicting turning points in the economy.The raw data from each component is then standardised and related to its long-term trend or average, after which the seven components are weighted together to form the indicator.