Manufacturing

SWEET & SOUR: Iran, China, M-PMI, & PPI

Mar 2, 2026 3 min read

I. Hot war with Iran and cold war with China We remain in the short-war camp on the outlook for the current conflict in the Middle East. The stock market seems to agree, since it barely budged today, though defense stocks rose significantly (chart). Geopolitical crises tend to create buying opportunities in the stock market (chart). The problem is that everyone knows that, which diminishes the magnitude of opportunities! Following

Ed Yardeni
Toby Hearst

July's Purchasing Managers Surveys Are Mixed

Aug 5, 2025 2 min read

The stock and bond markets didn't respond much to the national survey of non-manufacturing purchasing managers this morning, even though it was on the weak side (chart). The overall NM-PMI, which the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) compiles, edged down to 50.1, just above the expansion/contraction line at 50.0. The production component was solid at 52.6. But the employment component fell to 46.4.

Ed Yardeni

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: April 21-25

Apr 21, 2025 3 min read

This week's data are likely to confirm that consumer sentiment (Fri) remained sour this month. The housing market is unlikely to have thawed last month given that mortgage rates remain high and building costs will increase with tariffs and a shortage of immigrant labor. Even some incremental good news on durable goods orders (Thu) would likely be chalked up to tariff front-running, especially as we expect regional Fed

Ed Yardeni

Trump Making Powell The Fall Guy Again

Apr 17, 2025 3 min read paid

As we've said before, any day without Trump Tariff Turmoil (TTT) is a good day for financial markets. Despite UnitedHealth Group’s losing roughly a quarter of its value today on poor earnings and higher medical costs, the S&P 500 stayed mostly above yesterday's close all day. Even the Russell 2000 was up today. While Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly made progress on a

Ed Yardeni

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: April 14–18

Apr 13, 2025 3 min read paid

The economic week ahead will provide updates on the goods-producing sector, consumer spending, and inflation. Macroeconomic data may be drowned out by more explosive volatility in the financial markets attributable to Trump's Nitro Tariffs (TNT). In addition, the Q1 earnings season has started, and company managements are likely to provide lots of "we-have-no-idea" guidance as a result of TNT. In any event, incoming data may signal

Ed Yardeni

ECONOMIC WEEK: February 24-28

Feb 23, 2025 3 min read paid

The week ahead will feature Nvidia's earnings report after the market closes on Wednesday. That may be more important to the stock market than any of the economic indicators to be released during the week. Last week, Elon Musk's artificial-intelligence startup, xAI, unveiled its latest AI model, Grok 3, claiming it outperforms DeepSeek and OpenAI models across various benchmarks. The firm utilized 200,000 GPUs to

Ed Yardeni

Hitting a Wal(mart)

Feb 20, 2025 3 min read paid

Disappointing forward guidance from Walmart weighed on the stock market today. The company's shares fell 6.5% today despite a very strong Q4, mostly because the company's 2025 earnings expectations fell short of analysts' estimates. Part of the worry came from comments on the possible negative impact of tariffs. Management’s guidance also reflected negative currency impacts and a hit from acquisitions. On balance, the

Ed Yardeni

ECONOMIC WEEK: February 18–21

Feb 17, 2025 3 min read paid

The shortened economic week ahead is an important one for our rolling recovery forecast in the manufacturing sector. January's data suggested that industrial production may be starting a cyclical rebound (chart). This week's early look at February's regional business survey data may confirm that. There will also be updates on the housing sector. Let's discuss what's up ahead:

Ed Yardeni

ECONOMIC WEEK: February 10-14

Feb 9, 2025 4 min read paid

The focus of the economic week ahead will be inflation. Businesses tend to raise prices at the beginning of the year; that could result in January CPI and PPI releases (Wed and Thu) that are hotter than expected even though both are seasonally adjusted. A few Fed officials recently worried out loud that tariffs could interrupt the progress toward the Fed's 2.0% inflation target. We expect Trump

Ed Yardeni

Make Manufacturing Great Again!

Feb 3, 2025 3 min read paid

Markets were abuzz with headlines from Washington today. The S&P 500 opened 1.7% lower on the weekend's news that President Donald Trump announced that he would slap 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada on Tuesday. But losses were pared significantly after Trump's call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum resulted in a one-month delay of tariffs as well as bilateral cooperation on fentanyl, immigration,

Ed Yardeni

Stocks Stay Afloat in Deep Waters

Jan 27, 2025 3 min read paid

DeepSeek took a bite out of semiconductor, other tech, as well as nuclear power stocks today. Many of these AI plays dropped by double-digit percentage points, and Nvidia fell 17%. Other than the impact of the largest US stock nearly entering a bear market in one day, plus some collateral damage in other large stocks, the broader market held up just fine. The S&P 500 fell less than

Ed Yardeni

US Economy: Another Mostly Pretty Picture

Jan 16, 2025 4 min read

Today's batch of December economic indicators in the US has mostly eased any downside concerns about the labor market, consumers, and the economy overall. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracking model is now showing Q4-2024 real GDP growth of 3.0% (saar), driven by a 3.7% increase in consumer spending on goods (chart). The latter was revised up from 3.3% after retail sales was released

Ed Yardeni

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