RICH MELMAN Lettuce Entertain You, a Chicago restaurant company In boom times, his customers tend to splurge on $32.95 prime sirloins. When the economy slows–and Melman thinks it is slowing–people start scouring the menu for less expensive dishes, like the $17.95 club steak. “Recently I’ve seen much more of the lower-end club steaks selling,’’ he says. Side dishes are also telling, Melman adds. He’s noticing people are ordering fewer of them these days. MORRY TAYLOR Titan International, a tire- and wheelmaker He watches the price of cigars. They’re heading south in tandem with the economy, he says. “You’ve got to be a dummy to spend $35 and then smoke that cigar. That means there’s too much money around.” Taylor also follows national statistics on overtime, since that generates extra cash for discretionary spending. At Titan, OT is down 50 percent from a year ago. DONALD TRUMP Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts He tracks luxury- apartment sales in New York for a read on the economy (still strong, he says). And he has another favorite indicator: the number of women wearing fur coats. “Usually, the more women walking down the street in fur coats, the better the economy is, as far as I’m concerned. The more Bentleys and Rolls-Royces you see in Palm Beach, the better things are.” DAVID GOODE Norfolk Southern Railroad Goode watches weekly reports of the number of railroad cars that are loaded. “If I were on a desert island, I’d still try to get somebody to e-mail me the railroad car loadings by commodities,” Goode says. In January he saw a big slump in rail traffic of metals and auto-related shipments, leading Goode to believe the economy will remain soft into the summer. He predicts a recovery later this year.
