ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF DATA MANIPULATION?
The Philly Fed manufacturing index was just released for September. It was surprisingly BETTER than expected.
But as they say, the devil is in the details! ALL of the internal data worsened from the previous month. It seems very strange that the headline figure can improve, while all the internal supporting data that created that headline WORSENED at the same time!
Here's one explanation of the bizarre data:
"And yet anyone who takes the 2 minutes to look at the internals, such as the collapse in the Number of Employees Sub-Index, which tumbled from -7.3 to -10.7 (the lowest since September 2009), the decline in the Average Employee Workweek, or the surge in Prices Paid from 8 to 19, double the change in Prices Received which means plunging corporate profits, or the ever critical New Orders which declined from 1.0 to -0.6, and one can see why this is a report only an Econ Ph.D-cum-Central Planner can love. Finally adding insult to injury, is the 6 month forecast, which unlike all other regional Fed diffusion indices, collapsed by half, from 41.2 to 21.6, as the Hopium at least in the city of brotherly mugging appears to be running out. Stocks kneejerk in every possible direction hoping the Fed will provide a direction."
