Profiting in the Info Economy: Using the Various Indexes to Assess the Future.

(revised at 18:18)

Following are some of the indexes that some of our associates have utilized  to assess the state of the Big Tangible Picture (BTP) of the information economy:

Terrain

• The Baltic Dry Index (the successor version of The Baltic Freight Index)  

The # of packages that are being delivered around our globe offer the trend state of the world's economy. 

I saw a story somewhere between 2007 and 2008, where the the state of the logisitic business ( FedEx , UPS, DHL, etc) predicted the immediate slowdown of the global economy because of the declining quantity of freight shipments during the previous year or the previous three consecutive quarters for that year.

• Google Trends  This index monitoring the day to day flow of the information economy 
• WorldoMeter  (Real-time Global statistics)
• Standard and Poor 500 (S and P 500) Index
• The Economist Magazine's Crony Capitalism Index
• The Supply Chain Index
• U.S. Postal Service

Viewing the Consumer Marketplace

• The Purchase Power Parity
• The Big Mac Index   Out here in the west coast, some of us preferred the In -n- out burger double-double. 
• The Pizza Slice Index   The price goes up while the "baseline" standard of quality stays the same.
• Wilshire Index
• Comscore.com
• The Dollar Index

Effectiveness of Logistics and Process

• The Popularity of Programming Language Index  
• Cisco's Visual Networking Index (VNI)

More to come