Which would be the first macro-economic indicator that will concretely show the damage done by the tariffs?
So far I feel people are just theorizing how much the market would suffer from these tariffs. Most of them are predicting a 2% decline in GDP and around 8% to 10% decline in the average EPS of S&P 500 companies. A lot of these analysts I think set the year end S&P 500 prediction to be around -3%?
Either way. I feel people are using these predictions to trade stocks. All these indices are wildly swinging on these speculations. Today the market went up 3.6% in the morning and it was down 2.5% by the market close (S&P 500).
All of this made me wonder. Which macro-economic indicator/stock earnings report/whatever data point will be the first datapoint to concretely show the damage done by these tariffs?
Is it the Initial job losses report? CPI? PCE?
How many weeks or months will it take before we will get to know the actual damage inflicted by these tariffs on the economy?