Today the U.S. Manufacturing ISM report was published and the U.S. Manufacturing PMI rose to 52.7% during November. The U.S. Manufacturing PMI – an index that presents the economic activity in the U.S. manufacturing sector, rose for the 28th consecutive month; the growth rate increased from 50.8% in October to 52.7% in November i.e. a 1.9 percent points increase. This means that the U.S. manufacturing sector is growing at a higher pace in November compared to October.
Among the factors that were examined in this survey: one of the sharpest increase was the production from 50.1% to 56.6% – an increase of 6.5 percent point; customer inventories also grew by 6.5 percent points; new orders also rose by 4.3 percent points to 56.7%; on the other hand, among the factors that shrunk were backlog of orders – a decrease of 2.5 percent point to 45% and suppliers delivery – a drop of 1.4 percent point to 49.9.
According to Roache et. al (2008) it was implied that the PMI Manufacturing ISM report has a negative relation with gold and silver prices, without controlling the effect of US dollar. Currently, it seems that this news might have a modest effect on gold and silver prices as they are traded with moderate changes, with gold price slightly falling and silver price moderately rising. The PMI news also suppose to have a positive lagged relation with natural gas prices, i.e. all things being equal and when controlling for the U.S dollar, as the PMI Manufacturing ISM index tends to rise so do natural gas prices. Currently natural gas prices are inclining while other energy commodities prices such as crude oil prices are falling.
The U.S. stock market indexes are currently moderately changing with no clear trend for the DOW, S&P500 and NASDAQ.
Current gold price, short term futures (January 2012 delivery) is traded at $ 1,744 per t oz. a $5.9 decrease or 0.34%, as of 18:48*.
Current Nymex crude oil price, short term futures (January 2012 delivery) is traded down by 0.83%, at $99.53 per barrel as of 18:54*.
Euros to USD is currently traded down at 1.3474 a 0.1989% increase as of 18:35*.
(* GMT)
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