manufacturing

The Institute for Supply Management released its widely-followed index of manufacturing activity today. The data show that the US manufacturing sector contracted in June for the first time since July 2009. Given economic weakness elsewhere…

Here's a chart via Bloomberg that gives the overall picture. The data are poor in all regions including Germany and France. Markit, which collects the data, says that the latest PMIs are consistent with GDP in Europe contracting 0.5% this…

It was not the news stream, which was poor to say the least. The flash European PMI and German IFO warns that even the German economy may be fizzling. UK Q1 GDP was revised down. Yet by the news hit the euro selling appears to exhaust…

When I listed my Ten Surprises for 2012 in January I predicted that China would have a hard landing, defined as quarterly growth below 5% annualised by the end of this year. But I also said that India would be worse than China. And it is…

A slew of manufacturing data was released today in Asia and Europe to go along with the Manufacturing data we saw yesterday in the United States. The data show a divergence of economic fortunes that demonstrates the severity of Europe's…

The US manufacturing ISM surprised the market in a favorable direction. Rather than soften like the consensus expected, the diffusion index rose to 54.8 from 53.4. This represents the strongest showing in eleven months.

Note the peak in manufacturing jobs in June 1977, which represented 22 percent of all nonfarm payrolls, then, to fall to less than 9 percent of total employment today. It’s too earlier to claim victory with the current recovery in the…

I have been saying that I expect German data to disappoint and come in on the softer side. Why? This post explains.

The concept of German decoupling from the Eurozone recession may have been wishful thinking. The latest German Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) has converged with that of the Eurozone as a whole. Manufacturing PMI is a closely…

The string of developments has encouraged risk-off behavior. Equity markets are lower. Core bonds are higher. The high beta currencies, such as the freely traded emerging market currencies, the Australian and Canadian dollars, the euro,…