We track US power consumption on a weekly basis as reported by Barron’s, as we believe this information provides insightful – albeit sometimes “noisy” and seasonally unadjusted – clues about the performance of the economy over time. The expectation is that a more robust economic environment requires more power, although factors like colder winters and warmer summers relative to the norm can greatly skew the analysis. With that in mind, let’s have a look at the weekly historical performance of this indicator going back to 1995 (in MM kWhs): Many peaks and bottoms can be observed as power demand changes seasonally over the year. We have used polynomial smoothing to extract a trend line (in black). Some quick observations: US power consumption peaked in 2006 (red line), approximately in line with the peak in the US housing market, and the trend line has flatlined since. By definition a peak […]