While it does not get much national attention, I enjoy looking at the ISM Milwaukee data. After anticipating the decline seen over the past two years in the national data, the ISM Milwaukee bottomed last fall and had risen from 40 to 55 as of February. A more nationally followed regional index is the one for New York (the Empire State Index). As can be seen on the chart, that index has also seen a sharp rebound (the data there goes through March).
The Industrials sector has been one of the best performing sectors in 2016 and has been trending higher relative to the S&P 500 overall since August of 2015. This has broken a multi-year relative down-trend and suggests conditions in the manufacturing sector are indeed improving (or are at least not as bad as many may have feared).
Thanks for reading.
Twitter: @WillieDelwiche
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