The Holy Grail of Trend Failures

The following chart shows the 2-year moving average of the natural log of annual total private religious construction spending. When using natural logs, constant exponential growth is seen as a straight line.


Click to enlarge.

Note that the exponential growth is/was growing parabolically (as seen in both the blue and the red trend lines).

What a beautiful chart! So symmetrical! Base of a holy grail? Base of a mushroom cloud? Your call!

This post inspired by dearieme's comment.

I want to see you combine your old favourite, the exponential trend failure, with your new favourite, the parabolic trend failure.

So I invite you to plot something in a logarithmic co-ordinate, that looks like a parabola until wham!

I joked that it would be the holy grail of my quest. I did not expect the quest to end so quickly!

It is only fitting that it would end with a religious theme. Let's hope the faithful don't see this as the sign of the apocalypse though, because I doubt Jibbers Crabst would approve.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart