Market trend research: five checks before you trust a trend

Market trend research answers one question: is this change real, and does it reach the customers you sell to? For a one-off trend question you don't need a report. Check public data series, see when search interest started, read what public companies say and spend, count job postings, then call a few people who see the trend in their daily work.

Some signals are much harder to fake than others. A headline costs nothing to write. A job posting costs a salary. Start cheap, and stop as soon as the answer is clear enough to make your decision.

Write the trend as a claim you could be wrong about

Here is a made-up example. Dana runs a small company that sells scheduling software to heating and cooling contractors in Ohio. An investor tells her heat pumps are "taking over," and asks whether her product is ready. Dana has a whiteboard, a free afternoon and no budget for a market report.

"Heat pumps are taking over" can't be checked. This can: "Over the last three years, heat pumps have become a larger share of the residential systems my customers install, and the share is still rising in the Midwest." It has a measure (share of installs), a time window and a place.

Then write the decision the answer feeds. For Dana, it is whether to build heat pump job templates this quarter. If no answer would change that decision, skip the research and go back to the whiteboard.

1. Check whether the trend shows up in counted data

A real trend usually leaves a mark in numbers someone counts for another reason. Start with the free series:

• FRED, maintained by the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, holds hundreds of thousands of economic time series gathered from many public and private sources, including federal statistical agencies. Its companion database, ALFRED, keeps every past revision of a series, which matters when a number you remember has since been revised.
• The Census Bureau's Business Formation Statistics report new business applications monthly and weekly, with weekly data broken out by industry. Useful when the trend is "everyone is starting an X business."
• The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey estimates job openings, hires and separations each month, nationally and for every state.
• Industry associations often publish the most specific series. The Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) issues a monthly report of U.S. shipments of central air conditioners, air-source heat pumps, gas and oil furnaces and tank water heaters, usually on the second Friday of the month for shipments made two months earlier.

For Dana, the AHRI report is the closest thing to her claim. She should compare heat pump shipments against furnace shipments over at least three years, because a share moves only when one option gains on another, while a raw count can rise just because the whole market had a good year. Three years also keeps one hot summer from looking like a revolution.

The tradeoff: counted data is national and late. It tells Dana what happened across the country two months ago, not what her Ohio contractors did last week. Secondary market research covers how to judge a public number before you trust it.

2. Use Google Trends to date the attention, not to measure demand

Google Trends is the first thing most people open, and the easiest to misread. Google's own explanation of the data says it uses a sample of searches, scales each result from 0 to 100 relative to all searches in that place and time, and is not a scientific poll. For low-volume terms, Google warns that apparent spikes can be statistical noise.

So a line that climbs from 20 to 80 means people searched the term a larger share of the time. It doesn't say how many people searched, or that any of them bought something. Searches rise with news coverage, new rebates and complaints, and all three look the same on the chart.

Use Trends for two jobs. Date when attention started, then check whether counted data followed it months later. Compare regions, if Dana wants to know whether Ohio searches lag the national pattern. Never put a Trends line in a sales forecast.

3. Read what companies say, then look for what they spend

Public companies describe their markets in annual reports and earnings calls, and both are free.

The SEC's EDGAR full-text search covers every electronic filing since 2001. Put the phrase in quotation marks to match it exactly, set a custom date range and filter to annual reports (form 10-K). Run the same search one year at a time and count how many companies mention the trend each year. Dana would search "heat pump" and read what the large equipment makers say about it: a growth line, a risk or an afterthought.

On earnings calls, skip to the analyst questions. Prepared remarks are written to sound confident. The questions show what investors doubt, and a vague answer to a direct question is a finding in its own right.

Then discount the words. Mentioning a popular trend costs a company nothing. In 2024 the SEC charged two investment advisers with making false and misleading claims about their use of artificial intelligence, a practice it called "AI washing," and they paid $400,000 in combined penalties. Look past the adjectives for money: a new factory, a capacity increase, a segment that reports its revenue separately. Spending is the part of a filing that is hard to fake.

4. Count job postings, because hiring costs real money

A company can talk about a trend for free. Hiring for it costs a salary, so postings are a stronger signal.

Indeed Hiring Lab publishes a free job postings tracker: daily, seasonally adjusted postings on Indeed, shown as the change since February 1, 2020, with sector files based on job titles and breakdowns for U.S. states and metro areas. Use it to see whether a whole field is hiring more or less than before.

For your own trend, go narrower. Dana should search job boards for "heat pump installer" in the Ohio metro areas her customers serve, and note whether the postings come from her kind of customer: small contractors, not national chains. Twenty small contractors asking for heat pump experience say more about her market than one manufacturer's press release.

The limits: a posting is not a hire, and some companies leave postings up for months. Compare the same search at two dates a few months apart, not a single snapshot.

5. Call three to five people who see the trend every day

Data tells you something changed. People who do the work tell you whether it reached your customers, and why. Pick people whose job puts the trend in front of them every week. For Dana, that means contractors who install systems, a supply house's counter staff who see what contractors order, and the staff who process a local utility's rebate applications. Skip the commentators. Someone who writes about heat pumps knows the headlines. Someone who installed four of them last month knows how long the job takes.

Ask about what they did, not what they predict:

1. What share of the systems you installed last month were heat pumps? What was it two years ago?
2. When a homeowner asks about a heat pump and then buys something else, what usually stops them?
3. What changed in how you quote, schedule or staff these jobs?
4. Who is pushing this, the homeowner, the manufacturer or a rebate program?

Question 3 is the one Dana's product lives on. Our expert interview guide covers how to run these calls, and channel checks covers talking to distributors who see many buyers at once. Ask people what they see in their own work, and never for a former employer's confidential numbers.

Score the trend before you decide

Put each check in one line, then look at where they agree.

Act when counted data and operator calls agree. Treat the trend as attention, not demand, when only Google Trends and earnings call language are moving. Two weak signals pointing the same way still don't make one strong one.

This approach fits a single question. If you need to watch a market every month, that is market intelligence, and it needs a routine.

Your next step

Write your trend as one claim with a measure, a place and a time window, then pull one counted series that could prove it wrong. Before you decide, talk to a few people who see it every week. Instant Expert can find people matching a description such as "heating and cooling contractors in the Midwest who install residential heat pumps," send each a paid invitation for a short call, and you pay only if someone books. The offer you set is what they receive, and Instant Expert's fee is added on top. For broader questions, start with the directory pages for heads of strategy and building energy management experts.