Trying to handicap economic moves has become a popular, yet whipsawn, source of entertainment, at least among fiscal pundits and the media. But few things are a given and it can be tough to know the ultimate direction when things are moving fast.

And so, there's particular attention to portents like yield curve inversion or whether there is negative GDP growth for two quarters running. But these are at best rough rules-of-thumb and not definitive. The National Bureau of Economic Research, which is the non-profit that makes the official call on US recessions, explicitly says that there are multiple factors that come into play and no single one is definitive.

Marcus & Millichap address the issue given recent yield curve inversion. Once again, the yield on a shorter-term Treasury note was higher than on a longer-term one (with two-year and ten-year being a common pair for comparison). Is there an association between an inversion and a recession within a couple of years? There certainly seems to be. As the firm notes, "Six of the past seven sustained inversions have preceded a recession by up to 23 months."