Purchasing Managers Index (PMI)

The Institute for Supply Management (that was called the National Association of Purchasing Managers (NAPM) before) publishes a monthly complex index of national manufacturing conditions, that contains data on production, new orders, supplier delivery times, inventories, backlogs, prices, export orders and import orders and employment. It consists of two sub-indices: non-manufacturing and manufacturing.

Productivity and Costs

Productivity is seasonally adjusted review that measures the change in output per hour of work. It provides quarterly statistics on total labor compensation as well.

Productivity considers the possibility of economic growth without a raise in inflation. It has valuable effect on the outlook for employment and it is also an indictor as efficiency of the labor market.

GDP-Based Price Indices

The broadest measure of inflation in the economy is GDP-Based Price Indices. It is part of the quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report representing quarter-to-quarter percent change in weighted price indices for the various components of GDP, for the ratio of nominal (current-dollar) GDP to real (inflation-adjusted) GDP and gross domestic purchases (excludes exports).

The Producer Price Index (PPI) measures the average level of prices of a fixed basket of goods received in primary markets by producers. The monthly reports of this index indicate commodity inflation. The PPI is widely followed because it accounts for price trends throughout the manufacturing sector.

The PPI is popular but leaves out the food and energy components. These items are usually much more changeable than the rest of the PPI and can therefore obscure the more important underlying trend.

Studying the PPI allows consideration of inflationary pressures that may be receding or accumulating, but the index has still to be improved.

A rising PPI is normally expected to cause higher consumer price inflation and therefore to potentially increase short-term interest rates. Higher rates will often have a short-term positive affect on a currency, however outstanding inflationary pressure will often weaken the confidence in the currency.

Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank Business Outlook Survey

This survey is based on a poll of manufacturing firms in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, the bank’s district, on recent expectations and developments with response to “general conditions” and specific manufacturing activities. It represents trends in regional economic activity.

Philadelphia Fed

This index reflects the conditions of regional manufacturing that covers Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. This region is considered to represent a reasonable cross section of different sectors of national manufacturing. Expanding factory sector is represented by readings above 50 percent; while rates below 50 are the symptom of contraction.

This index, along with the Chicago Purchasing Manager’s Index, is designed to predict the results of ISM index, which is the leading indicator of economic activity as a whole.

Personal Consumption Expenditures

Personal Consumption Expenditures shows the level of consumer spending for all goods and services, quoted in both real (inflation adjusted) and nominal (current-dollar) terms and divided into three categories: durable goods, nondurable goods and services. This indicator represents two-thirds of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Personal Income shows households’ income from all sources, which are self-employment, employment, investments, and transfer payments. It can also be described as total pretax annual income earned by private trust funds, individuals and non-profit organizations.

Disposable personal income (DPI) measures personal income discounting tax and non-tax payments, or, in other words, personal saving subtracts personal consumption expenditures plus interest payments and net transfers to foreigners from personal income.

This index can be helpful in forecasting changes in consumer spending patterns. Two-thirds of GDP is personal consumption; therefore consumer spending has an effect on economic growth.

Spending is determined mostly by income, and average US consumer spends approximately 95 cents of each new dollar. Larger spending benefits the stock market and stimulates corporate profits.

The Payroll Employment

The Payroll employment, that also known as the Labor Report, considered to be the most important among all economic indicators. It represents extensive look of the economy as it includes all necessary factors of the economy. It is usually released on the first Friday of the month. As valuable source of information about changes in job creation in several industry categories, it can reflect the detailed picture of job market.

Payroll Employment is a measure of the number of people being paid as employees by non-farm business establishments and units of government. Monthly changes in payroll employment reflect the net number of new jobs created or lost during the month and changes are widely followed as an important indicator of economic activity.

Large increases in the payroll employment indicate strong economic activity that could eventually cause increasing of interest rates and support the currency at least in the short term. However, during the rising of inflationary pressure, this may weaken the long-term confidence in the currency.

Retail Sales

Total receipts of retail stores are measured by the Retail Sales. This is one of the most followed consumer spending indicator that shows the rate of retail sales change through its percentage changes.

Retail sales accumulates about one half of total amount of consumer outlays and over 30 percents of total activity of the economy.

Auto sales follow Retail Sales less due to their higher volatility referring to other parts of the Retail Sales and the following possibility to figure out more significant trend.

Retail sales take the effects caused by the inflation into consideration being measured in nominal conditions. At least a short-term support to the currency may be expected when Retail Sales figures grow up giving the signs of a severe economy that predicts short-term interest rates increase.

Residential Construction Spending

What is it : The amount of whole spending for both private and public construction that has the seasonal adjustment for publishing in inflation-adjusted (real) as well as in nominal figures.

Why we care : Some parts of the quarterly GDP report are calculated using Construction spending directly. Still, the financial markets prefer dealing with to housing starts and new home sales because Construction spending suffers quite frequent revision.

Redbook Index

CPLR 3211 (a) (7) is often referred to for failure by the defendants attempting to cause a dismissal for the complaint. This happens because the public requires a contrary relief of the complaint. There are three causes of the action most often interfered into the complaint. The first is “hot news” misunderstanding, legal basis and the competition held unfairly. The second includes wrong trade secrets appropriation. The third is an insincere contracts conducting.

The brokerage firm called “LJR” (Plaintiff, Lynch, Jones & Ryan, Inc.) deals with institutional securities and provides market research for its institutional investors among its other services. They are the unique rights owner and publisher of “the Redbook Index” (“LJR Redbook Research Retail Sales Growth Index”). The “Redbook Index” is also known to have the information of proprietary and prepared by LJR at its own expense and effort.

The Redbook Index is provided by LJR as a research report prepared each week for major institutional investors being its paying subscribers. LJR distributes the Redbook Index to its subscribers through telephone, hard copy and facsimile. The most important data of the Redbook Index, as LJR states, is the compared information of the national retail sales growths and declines as well as the common data of the previous month.

The subscribers receive the Redbook Index at 2:05 P.M. (EST) and at 2:40 P.M. (in 35 minutes) it is presented to the public. The “embargo period” (the time between the subscribers and general public receive the Redbook Index data) was set to 35 minutes as a result of the Plaintiff subscribers’ agreement. Plaintiff is sure that its subscribers appreciate the embargo period greatly. This period gives an advantage before non-subscribers to make analyzed buying decisions earlier than the Redbook Index is spread among the public.

The analysis, monitoring and explanations of the consumer economy and retail sales trends are the things that the Redbook is responsible for. It has proved its reliability by having a 41-year history, being an independent monitor of the trends for all these years. Wall Street has the weekly proprietary retail sales index of the Johnson Redbook Index as the most watched one. The warnings, given in advance by the Index, show early signals of business cycle changes, sector rotation, inflation and interest rates fluctuations.

A number of other statistical analyses of the retail sales series trends are carried out by the Redbook. One of them is retailer same-store data that is based on the largest database of proprietary. The Redbook also carries out a close consumer economy monitoring in order to find the fundamentals that form demand, such as Consumer Indicators watching monthly more than 150 indicators in order to forecast major trends for short- to medium-term to let various consumer watchers along with retail investor use this data.