But, but, but... the rest of the world's PMIs are soaring as soft-survey data trumps any hard data facts [2]. US Manufacturing dropped from 57.3 to 56.3 despite analysts that were convinced it should rise further to 57.5. This is the biggest miss on record, and the 2nd miss in a row. In spite of soaring markets proving the recoverty is just picking up and accelerating, new export orders weakened, manufacturing production fell, input costs surged, and employment tumbled to 10-month lows. But, stocks are surging on this dismal news...
[3]
as Employment tumbled to its worst of the year!
[4]
"Worryingly, job creation slid to its lowest since last September, which in part reflects concerns that current sales growth may not be sustained. A key source of concern is export sales, which continue to show disappointingly meagre gains"
* * *
A gentle reminder from BofA of the uselessness of the soft survey based PMI data... [2]
the US data mills churn out a lot of surveys. Since the last FOMC meeting, there have been four new ISM readings and a bunch of regional releases. A popular view is that these surveys are better than hard data.
In our view, however, these data get way too much air time. They give a timely, rough read on the economy, but should get little weight once hard data are released.
