Data and methodology

How to cite our work, and how the two data features on this site are built.

How to cite our work

Cite the page you used, with its author line, title, publication date and web address. For example: Icarus Asia Research, “Title of piece,” Asian Value Investor, 14 September 2026, https://www.asianvalueinvestor.com/deep-dives/title. Pieces first published elsewhere carry their original publication date. For reuse beyond a short quotation, see our Terms or contact us.

Recession Watch

The chart shows the gap between 10-year and 2-year U.S. Treasury yields, set against the federal funds rate. The data comes from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), series T10Y2Y, FEDFUNDS and USREC. The spread is the monthly average of the daily figures. Red marks months when the curve was inverted. Grey bars mark U.S. recessions as dated by the NBER. An automated job refreshes the data on weekdays.

Men’s Underwear Index (MUI)

The MUI page tests a story attributed in press accounts to Alan Greenspan. The core gauge is real retail sales of men’s clothing divided by the CPI apparel index, smoothed over three months and measured year on year. Supporting series cover men’s clothing stores (which end in April 2021), producer prices for underwear, and an annual real growth measure with a 1% threshold. Recessions come from the NBER indicator in FRED. A “false alarm” is three or more negative months outside a window around a recession. Results can change when agencies revise their data. The page is a fun story, not a tested forecasting tool, and not investment advice.

Corrections and sourcing

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