Lies, damned lies and statistics

Britain is either teetering on the brink of a savage recession to rival the 1930s, or finally beginning to recover. It all depends on which figures you believe....

We either live in the sickliest major economy in the world, or one of the healthiest.

The experts can't quite agree.

The housing market has much further to fall, or else it has finally started to bottom out.

Take your pick, because the data allows you to argue both ways. So what are we supposed to do about it?

House price recovery, or crash?

Let's start with house prices. Most analysts agreed prices still had a long way to plunge, until last week's figures from Nationwide suggested they actually rose by 0.9% in March, the first increase in the index in 16 months.

The Bank of England further surprised the pessimists by announcing that the number of mortgage approvals leapt 19% in February.

Estate agents across the nation were still hugging themselves with joy when, only a day after Nationwide released its figures, Halifax reported that house prices actually fell by 1.9% in March.

So is the worst over, or still to come? Nobody can say for sure.

Stock market rally, or collapse?

Last Thursday the FTSE 100 shot up 4.3% to hit a seven-week high of 4029, inspired by the G20 pledge to inject an extra $1.1 trillion into the International Monetary Fund.

When markets realised next day that much of this was old rather than new money, the FTSE 100 fell 2.3%.

In a further twist, the FTSE 250 remained buoyant, continuing its recovery on Friday to rise a total of 9% over the week.

Once again, the experts are confused. Is investor confidence returning or is this merely a bear market rally?

A debate is also raging over whether we are caught in a deflationary spiral or about to suffer rampant hyperinflation.

That is rather an important question to resolve, with central bankers injecting trillions into the global economy in a bid to stave off the former, which could end up sparking the latter.

Oh, and while we're at it, it would also be nice if the Prime Minister and Bank of England Governor Mervyn King could agree on whether the UK taxpayer can afford another stimulus package.

Here's something clear-cut.

The only thing everybody seems to agree on is that unemployment figures are horrible and going to get much worse.

The number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance leapt by a record 138,400 between November and January, pushing unemployment above 2 million for the first time since 1997, according to the Office of National Statistics.

Although confusingly, the number of people employed actually rose slightly by 2,000 during the same period.

Bottom of the class, or top?

Some of these contradictions are inevitable, given that these figures measure different indices at different points in their cycles.

Stock markets typically lead the charge out of a recession, because they reflect where investors anticipate the economy will in 18 months or so. So you would expect them to start moving into positive territory even while house prices and unemployment remain negative.

But how do you figure this?  In November, the IMF gave Gordon Brown's critics a very large stick to beat him with by reporting that Britain would be the weakest of the leading economies.

Then last week, the OECD predicted Britain will do better than any other major economy, apart from Canada and France.

Which one is it, please?

I can't pretend to hack a coherent path through all these contradictory figures, although my bet is that we're not out of the danger zone yet.

Markets don't move in straight lines. Even during the early 1990s housing crash, there were months when house prices rose.

The ratio of average house price to earnings is currently 4.34, still above the long-term average of 4.0. And as Ed Bowsher has argued, prices are likely to dip below that long-term average before they bottom out.

And I can't see how stock markets can launch a sustained recovery until the West has finally cleared up its legacy of toxic debt.

Make your own mind up.

All this demonstrates how you shouldn't get carried away by one set of positive or negative data, because there will be another along in a minute.

You have to take a longer view. Stock markets may be unreadably volatile, but over the next five or 10 years will surely rise above their current level, and perhaps dramatically so.

Investing regular amounts when prices are this low and holding it for the long-term gives you a very good chance of cashing in.

Similarly, if I was trying to time my entry into the housing market, say, to buy an investment property, I would leave it a few months longer.

But if I needed somewhere to live and had just spotted the property of my dreams at a price I could afford, I would put in a bid.

So don't be distracted off by the latest piece of good or bad news, much of which is pure speculation. Find a long-term strategy that works for you, and stick to it.

More: The truth about house prices