THE ARTICLE "A Criterion of Business Activity" (by Adam Gostomski and Bohdan J. Kekish) in the March-April 1965 issue of the Financial Analysts Journal prompts me to raise a few questions and make a few comments based on several years of experience in dealing with leading indicators. The use of a single composite indicator of leading indicators is not new. In the absence of any really scholarly research, we can immediately point to the Statistical Indicator Associates composite index of NBER leading indicators, which has been publicly available since 1955, and to similar composites devised by Dr. Geoffrey Moore of the NBER and by Edgar Fiedler of Bankers Trust Company. The SIA composite is an extremely simple statistical concept based on a simple averaging of individual indexes for 10 of the 12 NBER leading indicators. Dr. Moore's composite is refined by weighting the indicators according to their relative cyclical amplitude. And Mr. Fiedler has experimented with composites based on long-lead and short-lead indicators. Nevertheless, with a minimum of statistical manipulation, the simplest of these composites, the SIA composite, can be made to provide a graphic comparison with the FRB index of industrial production that, I submit, is quite comparable in its results with the "Business Criterion" of Gostomski and Kekish as the answer to the "busy analyst, or one frankly unable to reach a decision from many indicators" (to use the words of the two authors mentioned).' My experience is, however, that neither composite provides any such answer. On the contrary, without an accompanying interpretation, the "busy analyst" is apt to be greatly confused and/or seriously misled.