Drop in ISM Orders Index May Be More Benign Than Meets the Eye
This article is for subscribers only.
Some purchasing managers are betting they will get a better deal on raw materials if they wait until this year to stock up. That probably means manufacturing in the U.S. will pick up once again in early 2015.
The Institute for Supply Management’s orders index, one of the components of the Tempe, Arizona-based group factory gauge, decreased 8.7 points to 57.3 in December. It was the second-biggest decline since 2002, exceeded only by the 13.2-point plunge in January 2014 when much of the nation was covered by a blanket of snow, the figures showed today.