Hussman Weekly Market Comment: The Data-Generating Process

For anyone who works to infer information from a broad range of evidence, one of the important aspects of the job is to think carefully about the structure of the data – what is sometimes called the “data-generating process.” Data doesn’t just drop from the sky or out of a computer. It is generated by some process, and for any sort of data, it is critical to understand how that process works.

For example, one of the moments of market excitement last week was the reported jump in new housing starts for September. But later in the week, investors learned that there was a slump in existing home sales as well. If we just take those two data points at face value, it’s not clear exactly what we should conclude about housing. But the story is clearer once we consider the process that generates that data.