The KOF's leading indicator surprised on the upside in February. At 100.0, the headline measure was up from January's firmer revised 97.4 and a couple of points above the market consensus. This was its third successive increase and leaves the index matching its long-run average value.

The latest gain largely reflected a stronger performance by manufacturing but consumer-related sectors and the export side of the economy also improved significantly. The financial sector similarly made progress, albeit obviously. Elsewhere, other components were broadly flat with the exception of the hotel and restaurant industry where sentiment deteriorated slightly.

Today's updates put the Swiss ECDI at 7 and the ECDI-P at minus 20, the relative buoyancy of the former attributable to surprisingly firm prices that mask unexpected weakness in the real economy data.

KOF's leading indicator is expected to rise 8 tenths in February to 98.0. This index jumped 5 points in January to a 7-month high but still remained below its 100 long-run average.

The KOF Economic Indicator is a composite leading indicator that aims to identify shifts in the Swiss business cycle around three months ahead of the actual event and, until the start of 2014, was based on twenty-five different economic indicators. The old version of the KOF Economic Indicator used the previous year's GDP growth rate published by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) as a yardstick. The revised measure still incorporates SECO data; however, KOF has changed over to month-on-month changes in GDP which are generated via statistical methods. This reference series is not about exact GDP figures but about the direction and strength of the economic trend. The new objective of the Barometer is the same as the old objective: achieving maximum possible accuracy in predicting the Swiss business cycle.

The indicator measures overall economic activity through a qualitative business survey about developments in the recent past, the current situation and expectations for the next three to six months. Getting an accurate handle on where the economy is headed is inevitably a vital element in all investment decisions and the new measure uses some 219 variables in order to do just that. The set of variables will be reviewed every autumn.

Survey questions relate to production, orders and stocks of finished goods. The KOF Swiss Economic Institute publishes this indicator monthly.