US Richmond Fed Manufacturing Shipments Index (Jul) 8 (Prev. 3)

Richmond Fed is one of the smaller of the five regional manufacturing surveys and has historically carried less weight than the Empire and Philadelphia prints, with the shipments sub-index in particular treated as a coincident activity gauge rather than a forward-looking one, since the new orders component has tended to be the better predictor of the direction of the headline composite. A sequential improvement of this kind fits the pattern of noisy month-to-month swings in regional surveys, where single-month moves are routinely retraced and only runs of consecutive readings in the same direction have fed through to the national ISM and, from there, to rates pricing. The transmission channel, when it exists, runs from the regional surveys as a basket into ISM expectations and the front end; a lone Richmond sub-index print has rarely moved the dollar or Treasuries on its own, especially one released amid a heavier data calendar. The follow-ons of note are the remaining regional surveys and the national ISM, where confirmation or divergence is what has historically mattered.