First, how should betting markets be viewed? Simply that they reflect the aggregation of all known information into one probability. So, they act like real-time polls, reacting quickly to new events.

(Looking at) the betting spread for who will win the presidency, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, Biden is essentially a 60-40 favorite to win. The trend in these numbers can tell us a lot: Trump had a bad June but the worst, for now, may be over.

What is the probability that either one of them wins the election? One can pay expensive Washington consultants, or create complicated computer models. Or, they can check the betting market and in 10 seconds get the same information.

The State of the Horse Race
Tim Duy writes about the economy and Federal Reserve for Bloomberg Opinion.  He is a professor of practice and senior director of the Oregon Economic Forum at the University of Oregon:

A key feature of this crisis is the decline in population mobility as we strive to contain the spread of the virus. That reduction is a direct reflection of economic activity and it provides insights into the direction of the economy.

The Dallas Federal Reserve Mobility and Engagement Index relies on cell phone data. The index is scaled so that zero is the average from January-February of this year and -100 is the lowest weekly for the U.S.For the nation, the index hit a low on April 11 and then began recovering. This is consistent with our understanding that many sectors of the economy bottomed out in mid-April. After that, a gradual reopening began. Subsequently released data such as retail sales confirmed this trend. But the index stopped rising in the week ended July 4. This likely reflects a surge in cases in some stages such as Texas, slowing the economic recovery. This may be an early indication that the pace of gains in traditional metrics such as the employment report will soon ebb. This would be consistent with predictions that full recovery will only come after the virus is contained to the point where we can freely move and interact as we did before the pandemic.

Is Another Slowdown Beginning?
Conor Sen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist focusing on labor and financial markets and the economy:

Perhaps no measure of the economic recovery is more important than the rebound in employment. The official data we get on a weekly basis is jobless claims, which tell us something about the number of workers being laid off but nothing about employers posting jobs or hiring people.

It's for that reason that weekly online job postings data from Indeed, written up by its chief economist, Jed Kolko, are so valuable. What we're seeing so far is a gradual improvement, much as we've seen from some other indicators. What's critical is that through the week of July 3, there hasn't been much difference in the pace of recovery between virus hotspots and non-hotspots. This may change in the weeks ahead, but it does suggest a durable recovery is taking hold.

Digging Out From a Deep Hole
Scott Kominers is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, writing about economics and markets.  He is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard Department of Economics.