Hey. I'm new here, I couldn't find a forum for general questions, so I hope this is an appropriate place for this one.

I need help figuring out what a "recession" is actually made of. Can someone help me understand this. Officially, the Early 2000s Recession was from March, 2001 to November 2001 (highlighted square), but as you see in the chart, the stock market continued declining for about another year after that (highlighted circle). Why is that subsequent period not considered part of that recession?

Unlike the Great recession around 2018 which officially lasted from Dec 2007–June 2009, (1 year and 6 months) which does officially capture the whole move down:

In a 1974 The New York Times article, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Julius Shiskin suggested several rules of thumb for defining a recession, one of which was two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.[6] In time, the other rules of thumb were forgotten. Some economists prefer a definition of a 1.5-2 percentage points rise in unemployment within 12 months.[7]

In the United States, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is generally seen as the authority for dating US recessions. The NBER, a private economic research organization, defines an economic recession as: "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales".[8] Almost universally, academics, economists, policy makers, and businesses refer to the determination by the NBER for the precise dating of a recession's onset and end.

In the United Kingdom, recessions are generally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, as measured by the seasonal adjusted quarter-on-quarter figures for real GDP,[4][5] with the same definition being used for all other member states of the European Union.[9]

To pile on to what Bob said those official recession start dates are released months after the fact. So for a trader it is an autopsy so of what value.

Right. Even by the simplest, bare-bones definition of "two down quarters for GDP," which is not the only definition, you won't know it until, well, two quarters -- six months -- have passed, at the very soonest.

It's historical, not current, information.

Bob.

IMO the next big thing won't be a recession, but much, much worse. Globally our debt has topped $188 trillion dollars. This to me is just incredible and the system won't be fixed with a simple recession next time.