I need help for my ECON homework

Please post your answer by 11:59PM EDT Thursday July 3rd and respond to at least one of your classmates' postings by 11:59PM EDT Saturday July 5th.

Leading Economic Indicators

The Conference Board, at www.conference-board.org tracks the leading economic indicators. (note: in this context, “leading” does not mean “best” or “most important”, but rather an indicator that tends to forecast economic movement. Lagging indicators are also tracked.)

On the top menu, click on “practice areas"”, then on “economic indicators and forecasting” on the drop down menu, then on “data & analysis” on the far left. Scroll down to the calendar. On the monthly calendar, you should see a day marked “US: leading index”- click on that day. You may have to go back a month if the current month’s data has yet to be released.

Click on : “Download a PDF of the technical notes for underlying detail, diffusion indexes, components, contributions and graphs” in the middle of the page. Note the summary of indicators on the first page (this is usually where the Conference Board states how the indicators performed overall), then scroll down to the table containing Data and Net Contributions for Components of the US Leading Economic Index and choose one component to analyze. Has this component risen or fallen in past months? What was the change over the past month specifically? How would this affect the overall leading economic indicator? What do you think these changes mean for the economy as a whole, and are the changes what you would expect?

As a side note, the components of the index recently changed, so long-term data may not be available. Here's some information on the change: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-05/makeup-of-leading-economic-indicators-index-in-u-s-to-change.html