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I am still recovering from a cross-country trip: my notes will be less frequent, perhaps shorter. I will not get to my e-mail as often and I will not be able to post comments as often or in a timely manner.
Did I miss something?
I woke up this morning before the market opened, and all I was hearing was that the market was in free fall following the New York manufacturing index dropping to its lowest in twenty years or something like that, and here we are, late afternoon:
- DOW: up 362 points
- S&P 500: up 20 points
- Nasdaq: up 92 points
Even WTI has recovered nicely and natural gas is down all of five cents, trading at a remarkable $8.615.
Oh, here it is: United States NY Empire State Manufacturing Index.
From Investopedia:
The term NY Empire State Index refers to the result of a monthly survey of manufacturers in New York state. The survey is conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The bank sends out the survey every month to business leaders who represent a wide swath of the manufacturing sector. The headline number for the index refers to the main index of the survey, which summarizes general business conditions in New York state. The index is widely watched for insights into the state and direction of manufacturing in New York state.
Empire State. New York. Manufacturing. One state. Are you kidding me.? That spooked everyone?
Think about this. One state. Why not look at the manufacturing index for the entire southeast and southwest (excepting California, of course)?
But this makes it huge. Look at "actual" vs "forecast." Wow, wow, wow. Does anyone think the Fed is really going to raise rates another 25 basis points with this data point, much less 75 basis points.
Index:
- forecast: positive 8.5
- actual: negative 31
The other item spooking folks: China cut "rates." Did anyone even look at the actual rate cut? Ten basis points.
China’s central bank cut both one-year and seven-day lending rates by 10
basis points, a move economists said would have little impact since
Covid controls have made households and businesses reluctant to borrow.
New credit in July increased at the slowest pace since at least 2017. Bloomberg.
Folks who have not read Peter Zeihan's book, c. 2022, completely miss(ed) the point regarding China's economic numbers. Oh, well.