Of the five regional manufacturing surveys released for February, four were in expansion and one was in contraction.
Analyst Opinion of Kansas City Fed Manufacturing
Kansas City Fed manufacturing has been one of the more stable districts and their index even though below the range seen in the last 12 months. Note that the key internals were mixed. This should be considered better than last month.
Market expectations from Econoday were —- to —- (consensus —). The reported value was -1. Any value below zero is in contraction.
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Tenth District manufacturing activity increased modestly in February, reaching positive territory for the first time in eight months (Chart 1). Expectations for future activity remained at solid levels, and the month-overmonth price indexes increased at a moderate pace. District firms continued to expect higher prices in the next 6 months.
The month-over-month composite index was 5 in February, higher than -1 in January and -5 in December (Table 1). The composite index is an average of the production, new orders, employment, supplier delivery time, and raw materials inventory indexes. The increase in district manufacturing activity was driven by both durable and non-durable goods plants, particularly food and transportation equipment producers. Most monthover-month indexes moved into positive territory in February, with many reaching their highest levels in over a year. However, the order backlog and employment indexes continued to fall. Year-over-year factory indexes rebounded strongly, with the composite index jumping from -7 to 5. The future composite index remained solid, inching slightly higher from 14 to 16.
“Regional factory activity finally expanded again in February,” said Wilkerson. “This was despite over 40 percent of firms reporting some negative effect from the spread of coronavirus so far in 2020.”
Summary of all Federal Reserve Districts Manufacturing:
Richmond Fed (hyperlink to reports):
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Dallas Fed (hyperlink to reports):
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Philly Fed (hyperlink to reports):
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New York Fed (hyperlink to reports):
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Federal Reserve Industrial Production – Actual Data (hyperlink to report):
Holding this and other survey’s Econintersect follows accountable for their predictions, the following graph compares the hard data from Industrial Products manufacturing subindex (dark blue bar) and US Census manufacturing shipments (red bar) to the Kansas City Fed survey (light green bar).
Comparing Surveys to Hard Data:
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In the above graphic, hard data is the long bars, and surveys are the short bars. The arrows on the left side are the key to growth or contraction.
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