The article introduces a new way to predict economic trends in Japan by creating a composite index of indicators. By using a specific model, the researchers found that their indexes were closely related to the traditional index used by the government. Surprisingly, the new indexes were better at forecasting economic downturns in the 1990s compared to the usual leading indicators. Additionally, looking at past values of the new indexes helped improve the accuracy of predicting future economic trends. This is important because many research institutes struggled to predict recent recessions in Japan.