For the 22nd straight month, The Dallas Fed's Manufacturing Survey headline indicator was negative in February.
Despite it's bounce from January lows, the headline remained at -11.3 (while the six-months-ahead forecast also surged to +11.8 - highest since Feb 2022)...
Source: Bloomberg
Under the hood, everything seemed positive too...
Labor market measures suggested growth in employment, Wage and input costs continued to increase this month, while selling prices remained flat. The new orders index - a key measure of demand - shot up 18 points in January to 5.2. The raw materials prices index retreated five points to 15.4, falling further below average and indicative of more modest cost growth than usual.
Source: Bloomberg
So, labor good, prices down, new orders awesome - sounds great right?
Let's ask the business owners in the Dallas area how they feel...
"There's an odd chill in the air that we can't determine if it's election related, general economic malaise or fear of pending doom. It's very strange. Things are status quo with a bit of negative undertone, which is somewhat disturbing for business owners."
"Turmoil at the federal level is impacting funding."
"Sales were below projections for January and February; March does not look encouraging."
"The shortage of labor that was critical during the pandemic and after has turned to being merely very tight—meaning very difficult to find qualified personnel. Job jumping has ground to a halt."
"I have no idea what is going to happen."
"The economy is hurting the trucking business. The uncertainty is bothering people."
"Please lower interest rates."
So, 'the data' is positive, but 'the anecdotes' are a shitshow.
We'll let Jeff Bezos explain which to pay more attention to...
"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.
There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it."
One can't help but see the glaring gap between private reality and managed data's sense of it - makes you wonder if there's an agenda at work.
Even Goldman recently admitted that there is vast divide between how happy we should all be based on government-supplied data versus how we actually feel...
Bidenomics!?
