Big positive surprise in the early figure for July: the Philly Fed Index jumps to 23.9 points. It was expected to drop from 17.8 to 15.6 points. The employment component advances to 12.2 points. New orders leap from 16.8 to 34.2 and this seems to be the main driver. On the downside we see a big drop in capital expenditure.
USD is somewhat stronger, but previous releases did not look so well, so the move is quite slow.
EUR/USD is now ticking down in range to 1.3523. GBP/USD is clinging onto 1.71. USD/JPY is around 101.55.
Earlier, data was mixed. Jobless claims slid to 302K, better than expected. However, both housing starts and building permits disappointed by losing the 1 million mark (annualized).
The Philly Fed Index is for the month of July, the current month, and therefore carries somewhat more weight. It is sometimes correlated with the ISM Manufacturing Index published at the very beginning of the next month.
