Predicting Future Boat Sales

In the previous posts in our data analysis series, we’ve analyzed the correlations between boat sales and other indicators, such as the S&P 500 Index, new home sales, business jet sales, and U.S. corporate profits. Today we’ll share the boat sales forecast for 2016-2017 that we computed using multiple linear regression, which uses historical data to predict trends. 

The prediction of the boat sales (the dependent variable) is derived from 3 forecasts (independent variables): new homes sales, the S&P 500 Index, and the MSCI Index, which measures the performance of a global economy. These provide the best correlation with boat sales historically.

Here are current and forecast boat sales:

The results of a statistical analysis reveal that more than 60% of predicted boat sales data points can be explained by just three variables, which is a good result. 

Certainly, there are many more factors that influence boat sales, but since these three indicators typically are good indicators of the economy, they can be used as a solid baseline for a boat sales forecast.