Tony from Chatswood, NSW asks for an indication of where we are in the economic clock:

But nothing is ever that simple. It's not unusual for the clock to be showing three different times at once. At present, for example, interest rates are rising but unemployment is falling. And what about commodity prices? Gold is rising, as is oil, but zinc isn't. So the economic clock is a nice model but far from clear-cut. If pushed, we'd plump for about 2 o'clock but having been asked this question a number of times over the past four years – when the relationships between the variables have been even more tenuous than usual – we wouldn't pay too much attention to it. What, then, should you do? Concentrate on the stocks in your portfolio rather than what the economy is doing at large. At least it's something that you have control over.