– by New Deal democrat
As I wrote on Monday, the big question for this year is whether the recessionary effects of the Fed rate hikes have just been delayed. Or whether, because the rate hikes have stopped, so has the headwind they normally produce. Watching manufacturing and construction, especially housing construction, is what I expect to supply the answer.
On Monday I focused on housing construction and sales. Since there’s no big economic news today, let’s take a more detailed look at manufacturing.
There are three manufacturing metrics that are “official” components of the index of Leading Economic Indicators: the ISM manufacturing new orders subindex, average weekly hours of manufacturing workers, and capital goods new orders. Note
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