Investing 101

_WhatIF: Earnings helps traders make sense of, and take action during earnings season. "What if..." is the question investors are always asking themselves. "What if oil drops from here?" or "What if the Fed surprises at the next meeting?" or "What if Microsoft beats earnings?"_

_This app educates investors and helps them understand what is going on in markets – before and after announcements. WhatIF is free and available to all traders at toggle.ai/earnings, the App Store, and the Play Store._

![WhatIF: Earnings app](https://storage.googleapis.com/toggle-webcm-prod/https://storage.googleapis.com/toggle-webcm-prod/Responsive_Rect_600x314_af330a6dc7/Responsive_Rect_600x314_af330a6dc7.png)

Citi Economic Surprises is a long-standing series published by Citi’s FX research department to gauge whether the economy is “beating expectations” of economic forecasters - this is very much the concept of a company beating analyst expectations, applied to a whole economy.

Improving economic growth is generally better for company earnings, while a slowing economic growth can hinder company earnings, as shown by a lot of Q4 2021 earnings calls with the current market environment. 

Several economic indicators are included in the basket and the weights are based on the impact that economic surprises have on FX crosses.

Economic surprises are meant to be used mostly in FX trading, but most investors use them to gauge whether the economy is on an uptrend or downtrend for broader economic allocation.

Stronger-than-expected economic growth is generally better for company earnings (although it depends on the exact nature of the business). However, when accompanied by rising interest rates it can temper a bullish market sentiment.

On the other hand, weaker-than-expected economic growth is generally bad for company earnings (again, dependent on the exact nature of the business). However, when accompanied by declining interest rates it can temper a bearish market sentiment.

![citi economic surprises](https://storage.googleapis.com/toggle-webcm-prod/https://storage.googleapis.com/toggle-webcm/citi_economic_surprises_7aba9e4091/citi_economic_surprises_7aba9e4091.png)

CESI is a long-standing series published by Citi’s FX research department to gauge whether the economy is “beating expectations” of economic forecasters.

Citi Economic Surprises

Economic Indicators

The MACD is possibly one of the most well known Technical Indicators. The acronym means Moving Average Convergence Divergence and the indicator is calculated as the difference between a shorter and a longer moving averages.

Moving averages are used to gauge trends. The basic assumption is that a moving average helps identify a trend, and therefore when a short-term one diverges or converges to a longer term moving average, the trend is meant to continue or invert. Generally, when one moving average crosses the other traders assume the trend will invert.

MACDs are defined by the windows of the two moving averages, for example one can have 1 month vs. 3 months, 12 weeks vs. 24 weeks, and so on.

Possibly the most well known MACD combo is the 50 days vs. 200 days one, which gives rise to two colorfully named inversion events: the Golden Cross and the Death Cross. These are, respectively, the occurrence of the 50D average crossing above the 200D one, and the mirror event when the shorter average crosses below.

MACD Indicator

Citi Economic Surprises