Today the Richmond Fed Manufacturing Composite Index increased slightly with a 5 point increase to 6 from last month's 1. Investing.com had forecast a rise to 3. Because of the highly volatile nature of this index, we include a 3-month moving average to facilitate the identification of trends, now at 1.3, in modest expansion.
The complete data series behind today's Richmond Fed manufacturing report (available here), which dates from November 1993. Here is a snapshot of the complete Richmond Fed Manufacturing Composite series.
Here is the latest Richmond Fed manufacturing overview.
Manufacturing executives anticipated positive business conditions during the next six months. Manufacturers expected faster growth in shipments and in the volume of new orders. Additionally, producers expected order backlogs to grow more quickly and looked for increased capacity utilization. Survey participants anticipated unchanged vendor lead times.
Manufacturers expected faster growth in the number of employees and looked for average wages to accelerate in the six months ahead. They expected a modest rise in the length of the average workweek. In addition, producers expected faster growth in prices paid and in prices received during the next six months.
Here is a somewhat closer look at the index since the turn of the century.
Is today's Richmond composite a clue of what to expect in the next PMI composite? We'll find out when the next Manufacturing ISM Report on Business is released.
Because of the high volatility of this series, we should take the data for any individual month with the proverbial grain of salt.