Financial markets freaked out on Aug. 14, when the interest rate on 2-year Treasury securities temporarily fell below the rate on 10-year notes. Long-term rates are normally higher than short-term ones, and when these rates “invert,” it often means a recession is coming. Stocks fell 3% that day.

But everything’s fine now! Stocks recovered and are close to new record highs. President Trump even suggested his critics are trying to talk people into thinking there’s a recession, to torpedo his 2020 reelection bid.

So what are ordinary people supposed to think? Is a recession coming or not? It’s actually extremely hard to predict. But there are a series of warning signs that normally flare as a recession is forming, and some of them have begun to light up.

Measuring the yield curve

The inverted yield curve has a strong record of foretelling a recession. But it’s a long-lead indicator, and different ways of measuring the yield curve are saying different things. The gap between 2-year and 10-year rates is now positive once again, for instance, suggesting no recession is coming.

But the gap between 3-month and 10-year rates has been negative since late May. And that gap has been a “remarkably good recession predictor,” according to research firm Capital Economics. A 3-month/10-year inversion has occurred before 6 of the 7 recessions we’ve had since 1970, with no false positives. It did not invert before the 1990 recession, but came close.

This warning sign flares 12 months before a recession actually begins, on average. If that were to hold this time around, it would suggest the onset of a recession around the middle of 2020. Economists are skeptical, however, partly because interest rates are far lower than historical norms, which may distort their predictive ability.

Another piece of data, the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators, is designed to predict turns in the economy—with a strong record of doing so. Capital Economics found that a recession developed every time the LEI, as it’s known, fell by 2% or more, on a year-over-year basis. But the LEI only predicted the onset of recession about a month ahead of time. It’s not at recession levels now, but it could get there in a fairly short period of time.

Other signals are less reliable. A measure of new orders in manufacturing, for instance, is now at levels that sometimes suggest a recession is imminent. But that gauge has hit similar worry levels several times in recent years, with no recession coming. Then it recovered.

When people start to notice

As for the warning signs most people tend to notice in their everyday lives, those usually occur very close to the beginning of a recession, or even after it has started. The unemployment rate, for example, typically hits a cyclical low right before a recession begins. By the time widespread layoffs kick in and everybody knows there’s a problem, the recession is typically on.