Recently the world was shocked — shocked! — to learn the U.S. had entered a recession way back in December 2007.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), that's when a broad range of U.S. economic indicators peaked, followed by a "decline in economic indicators in 2008 (that) met the standard for a recession."

So when did you find out the U.S. was in recession?

Was it in January of 2008, when the Dow was 12,500 and the S&P was 1,400?

Was it in February? Or in March?

In retrospect, knowing quickly when a recession starts is an important thing — one that can have a huge impact on individual investors. So the question is, when did our ChangeWave Research Network first identify that the U.S. was in recession? (See also: "Could the Recession Affect Our Water Supply?")

If your answer was "way back in January 2008," that's exactly correct.

Eleven months ago ChangeWave Research released important early intelligence on the recession. In fact, our first report of January 2008 was entitled: ChangeWave Survey Points to a Recession in Consumer Spending.

How Did We Know?

How did we know about the recession back in January 2008?

That's what our 20,000 member ChangeWave research network has been set up to do — identify critical changes that are affecting both companies and the overall macro-economy weeks and months before everyone else.

A glance at the first chart from our January consumer survey shows why we were able to call the recession from the start.

For the first time in our consumer surveys, the red line (% consumers saying they'll spend less money going forward) had crossed above the blue line (% saying they'll spend more money).

In other words, for the first time we were clearly registering negative consumer spending growth.

Now let's take a closer look at that same chart…