An Economic indicator that changes before the Economy has changed. Examples of leading indicators include production workweek, building Permit, Unemployment insurance Claim, Money supply, inventory changes, and stock prices. The Fed watches many of these indicators as it decides what to do about Interest rates. There are also Coincident indicator, which change about the same time as the overall economy, and Lagging indicator, which change after the overall economy, but these are of minimal use as predictive tools.
