We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.
BTS Sales Index January 2020 Update: -0.3
BTS Sales Index January 2020: 109.3 (-0.3%)
December 2019* in the Economy
- Aggregate revenue of BTS 1000 decreased $10 billion, from $3.41 trillion in November to $3.40 in December
- The US added 145,000 jobs in December. Retail contributed 41,000 jobs during the holiday season
- Despite the end-of-year surge in retail shopping, Pier 1 Imports and Macy’s both announced store closures
- The unemployment rate held steady at 3.5 percent, marking the third record-low month of 2019
- Although this decade started and ended without a recession, growth during the past 10 years has been slower compared to previous booms
- The US and China reached a trade deal that will be signed by mid-January
*the January update is reflective of December 2019 data
Why
Line of business and sales leaders tasked with making strategic decisions don’t have a good measure of confidence when deciding to ramp up production or invest in customer relationships. Quarterly GDP numbers and the S&P 500 paint two different pictures of economic performance, the former too slow to incorporate new data and the latter too likely to overreact to investor sentiment.
We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.
What
The BTS Sales Index represents the aggregate total revenue of the 1,000 largest publicly traded companies in the US in one simple to understand number.
How
As mentioned above, the BTS Sales Index is comprised of the total revenue of the largest 1,000 publicly traded companies incorporated in the US. Every month, we collect the total revenue reported by these companies and run the data through our custom-built indexing tool. The index uses the total revenue of the BTS 1,000 companies at the end of the second quarter of 2013 as its baseline because the economy showed signs of stable recovery. Unemployment was back to normal rates, housing prices remained steady, and stock prices were back to record levels.