Richmond Fed Business Survey Crashes In February As New Orders Collapse

After a shocking surge in January (from -5 to +20), Richmond Fed’s manufacturing survey has crashed back to earth in February, plunging back into contraction at -2 (drastically missing the expectation of +10)…

Source: Bloomberg

That was worse than the lowest estimate from analysts (forecast range from +3 to +15 from 12 economists surveyed).

Under the hood new order volumes collapsed…

• Shipments fell to 1 after 29 the prior month

• New order volume slowed to -10 after 13 the prior month

• Order backlogs fell to -6 after 9 the prior month

• Capacity utilization slowed to 2 after 14 the prior month

• Inventory levels of finished goods slowed to 21 after 28 last month

• Inventory levels of raw goods fell to 34 after 37 last month

Next we will see the Philly Fed spike erased as ‘soft’ survey data catches down to ‘hard’ data’s reality…