ISM Non-manufacturing report a rather brown shoot

I tried, but there was simply no way to find any good news in the ISM Non-manufacturing (services) Report on Business for July today. Overall it... sucked. The closest thing to good news is that although it declined from June, it was still better than the level in May. Also, there was only a very modest decline from June.

It isn't that the report itself was so bad, but that it was 180 from the improvement we saw on Monday in the ISM Manufacturing ROB.

The overall NMI (Non-Manufacturing Index) was down very modestly, but the BusinessActivity Index was down moderately since June. New Orders wer down modestly. Employment contracted at a faster pace. New Export Orders began contracting again after an expansion in June, but still above the May level.

The other way of looking at this report is that we did see three consecutive months of improvement since March, so one down report does not yet constitute a true change in trend, yet.

Anyway, for now, this was unforunately a brown shoot.

But I will let it slide, for now.

-- Jack Krupansky