The Dow and other stock indices are, of course, forward-looking indicators of the economy.
No doubt, you've watched with greater or lesser interest as the stock market climbs back from its Feb-Mar lows. Investors are anticipating greater spending, as reflected in another measure of the economy, consumer confidence.
Consumer confidence was at an all-time low in February and March. (The actual numbers were 25.3 and 26.9, but as the Conference Board uses an arbitrary scale, that's not directly meaningful.) We see that confidence has climbed back to a still-low (preliminary) value of 53.
The DJIA has also had better days:
People who feel confident about their future are more likely to make big purchases. I don't want to make very much of the relationship, though. The actual correlation, if we overlay the two time series, is not that high:
