Chicago PMI

The latest Chicago PMI ticked up this month.  This survey is heavily influenced by the auto industry.  There should be an uptick in that industry due to around 250k cars needing to be replaced after Sandy.  Here is the main index.

Source

Even with the uptick the chart is still in a downtrend.  There was mixed  news in the sub indexes.

The new orders surged.  Their charts are pretty hard to see so I am going to show the last six data points they have in the report.

There was a big surge in new orders which I am pretty sure is likely Sandy related.  That was the good news.  Next is the bad news.

Here is the employment index.

The employment index slipped into contraction mode for the first time since the last recession.

This is clearly a mixed data report.  I think there is a pretty big Sandy affect in a lot of data recently.  It may be hard to get a true read on the national economy for a few more months.

Bob