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Registration is now open for the third annual Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference.

The daylong event - the brainchild of local business consultant and technology enthusiast Francine Hardaway - is scheduled for Nov. 19 at the Marriott-Buttes Resort in Tempe.

This year's presenters will include Matt Mullenweg, the founder of blog-publishing software WordPress, and venture-capitalist and blogger Howard Lindzon. You can get a flavor of what the events are like by watching videos of presenters at last year's conference.

Registration costs $125 before Oct. 15. Proceeds go to the Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship Foundation, an organization Hardaway started to help at-risk youth and adults gain business experience. 

Have we hit bottom yet?

When it comes to the economy, nobody knows for sure. The news remains mixed, and conclusive answers won't be available for months.

Still, several indicators could help point to an eventual recovery. Here are some things to watch for:

' Housing stability.

The slump in residential real estate was the catalyst for the credit crunch and weak economy. It also has undermined consumer sentiment, since homes remain the largest asset for most Americans.

“It's a lynchpin of this cycle because the longer the housing market remains depressed and the deeper home prices fall, the more stress will build on the balance shets of banks and consumers,” wrote Kelly Bogdanor of RBC Wealth Management.

Before the skies clear, housing needs to improve. Bogdanor is watching for telltale signs like rising prices and an easing of the supply of homes for sale, which now stand near a record high.

Anthony Sanders, a finance and real estate professor at Arizona State Univerity, thinks prices will firm earliest in the most desirable urban areas, and he thinks it may have started.

“The worst appears over for prime areas,” he said. “(A recovery) has to start somewhere, and they always start in the prime locations.”

' Fewer surprises.

Investors hate it when skeletons fall out of the closet, yet the bones have been piling up from bailouts, bankruptcies and other blowups involving Countrywide Financial, Bear Stearns, IndyMac Bank, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and others.

Banks and other financial firms aren't out of the woods yet. Troubled loans, writeoffs and losses abound. More banks are likely to fail. Gerard Cassidy, senior bank analyst at RBC Capital Markets, predicts 265 banks could go under from 2008 through 2010, nearly all of them small institutions.

FBR Capital Markets also paints a grim picture, with an expectation that nonperforming loans will remain troublesome through year-end amid fears that problems might spread into commercial and industrial loans.

But they also say investor pessimism toward banking and bank stocks might have become overblown.

“We are beginning to sniff around for babies that have been thrown out with the bathwater,” they wrote in a report.

' Leading indicators

One of the best divining rods of future performance is a compilation of key statistics known as the

index of leading economic indicators, which tracks time-sensitive factors such as building permits, supplier deliveries and manufacturer orders. These factors don't work perfectly but, taken together, provide a fairly good glimpse on where things are headed.

For roughly the past year, the leading indicators have been bouncing around like a ping-pong ball — up one month, down the next. The index has dropped the past two months, although by minuscule amounts. A notable uptick here would be a positive signal, but it hasn't happened yet.

' Rising stock prices.

The stock market also could prove a good harbinger of an eventual recovery. Investors tend to anticipate corporate profits and economic conditions six to nine months down the road. Just as the market peaked late last year before some of the worst news hit, stocks could push higher before the all-clear signal comes.

In six of the past nine bear markets, stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 index rallied within six months of first hitting bear territory, according to Bogdanor. Those gains ranged from 4 percent to 28 percent.

Stock prices have stabilized since first entering bear territory in mid-July, but it's too early to pronounce a fundamental shift in direction.

' Consumer sentiment.

Nearly everyone seems pessimistic these days. Sentiment indicators like that tracked by the University of Michigan now stand at or near their lowest points in decades.

Some consumer problems, such as debt overhang, will take years to work through. But other factors can change much more quickly. For example, moderating gasoline prices would likely boost public spirits, and so would an easing of food-price pressures.

Into this mix the presidential election presents a wild card. In the past, the stock market has shown a strong propensity to rally during election years, reflecting growing optimism among the electorate. There's still time to see an improving mood swing if either or both candidates can generate some real excitement.

This article appeared in the July 27 issue of the Arizona Republic.

Reach Wiles at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8616.