Friday, February 02, 2007

ISM Goes Negative

Continuing a pattern of decreases for the last several months, the ISM index (Purchasing Managers' Index for us old fogies) has now gone negative. The index has been trending down since last April's 12-month high of 56.9. (It was also negative in November, bounced slightly "+" in December, and reverted in January.)

It's now 49.3, a 2 point drop from December.

As long as we mentioned old fogies, it's also noted in the ISM report that the price of copper is down. That's usually bad news for manufacturing.

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