James Picerno has been writing about investing and macroeconomics since the early 1990s at Bloomberg, Dow Jones and other media groups before becoming an independent writer/analyst in 2008. He also offers consulting services on asset allocation and portfolio strategy, the US business cycle, and related analytics in R and Excel. Picerno is the author of Quantitative Investment Portfolio Analytics In R: An Introduction To R For Modeling Portfolio Risk and Return , Dynamic Asset Allocation: Modern Portfolio Theory Updated for the Smart Investor and Nowcasting The Business Cycle: A Practical Guide For Spotting Business Cycle Peaks.