The Anatomy of a Recession

"There's no such thing as a crystal ball," Josh Jamner, investment strategy analyst at ClearBridge Investments, said at the Inside ETFs conference. The next best thing they have, however, is the Recession Risk Dashboard, which includes 12 economic variables that historically have done a good job of foreshadowing a downturn. 

The dashboard won a 2019 WealthManagement Industry Award in the Asset Managers: Client Experience Initiative category.

Jamner said the dashboard uses a stoplight analogy to indicate how things stand. Right now, the signal is at yellow, he said.

"We do think that later this quarter or early in the second quarter that we should see the dashboard break for the better—or for the worse—hopefully for the better," he said.