There is a simple reason why Zero Hedge has been doggedly following the not seasonally adjusted all-important New Orders number component of the ISM (see Fooling All The Experts With Seasonal Adjustments, All Of The Time [3]). That reason is that as a result of flawed Arima-X-12 assumptions, what is now a secular decline in the economy has been increasingly attributed to seasonal factors by both the BLS and the Institute for Supply Management. And as the ISM data revealed moments ago, we were right to focus on the NSA data, because while the Seasonally Adjusted (and one still wonders why a survey needs seasonal adjustments - after all human psychology automatically adjusts for the seasons) New Orders number tumbled by 8.7, the biggest crash since the 13.1 crash now blamed on the Polar Vortex (can't blame the weather this time), it was the unadjusted New Orders number that was the stunner: at 53.5 this was the lowest number since before even the polar vortex: in fact it was the lowest since July 2013!
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But what's worse: the key component that drives the unadjusted number, the number of respondents who say conditions are "Better", crashed from 38 to a paltry 25.
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This was the lowest number of respondents since... December 2012!
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