At the Associated Press, Christina Rexrode placed the blame for Monday's mediocre performance in the stock market squarely and obviously where it belonged: "Stocks struggled to stay out of the red in quiet holiday-week trading after a trade group said American manufacturing shrank in June for the first time in almost three years." The trade group involved is the Institute for Supply Management. Its manufacturing index dropped from 53.5% in May to 49.8% in June. Any reading below 50% represents contraction. Analysts expected that it would come in at between 52% (per Business Insider's email) and 52.5% (according to Zero Hedge).
Apparently the people who write CNNMoney's emails didn't want their readers to know the truth, as will be seen after the jump.
Here it is:
What a joke, as the AP's Rexrode made quite clear (bolds are mine):
... The Dow Jones industrial average was higher in early trading but fell after the manufacturing report came out at 10 a.m. EDT and never recovered. It finished down 8.70 points at 12,871.39.
... It was a tepid performance compared with Europe's. Stock indexes in France, Britain and Germany rose more than 1 percent, still riding the euphoria from Friday's announcement that European leaders will make it easier for banks to get bailout loans. That news pushed the Dow up 277 points Friday.
The government did report a sliver of good news about the U.S. economy Monday, though investors seemed underwhelmed: Construction spending rose in May by 0.9 percent, the most in five months.
The "global economic news" remained good (though in my view, it probably won't last, give that the "solutions" I've seen involve more stimulus and central bank gamesmanship and little in the way of true structural reforms). The domestic economic news wasn't. But CNNMoney apparently didn't want its readers to think that the economy is demonstrating signs of serious problems, lest they negatively impact their perceptions of Dear Leader. What a disgraceful disservice to its email subscribers, many of whom are basing their investing decisions and outlook on these communications.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
