Last week we would undoubtedly be called a week of central banks. This is, of course, related to the large number of monetary decisions that we have learned over the past days. In addition, the attention of investors around the world was also focused around Friday's publication of the report of the American Labor Office (BLS) on the change of employment in non-agricultural sectors (NFP) in July 2018. As usually happens, the beginning of the new month brought with it numerous readings regarding PMI.
There are two main entities responsible for the publication of the indicator in the world. The first of them is the Markit Group publishing readings for 30 countries around the world. The second - Institute of Supply Management (ISM) - focuses, however, only on the American market.
PIT Markit reports are always published at the beginning of each month. PMI of the industrial sector on the first day, PMI of the second construction sector, and PMI of the services sector on the third working day of each month. The index published today illustrates the activity of the industrial sector and describes the current situation in the economy.
The market participants also got acquainted with the results of the US PMI index illustrating the activity of the industrial sector in the United States - the first was published by IHS Markit, the second one by ISM. As usual in this case, the second is more important for US traders.
According to the IHS Markit report, the PMI index for the industrial sector was in July this year. at 55.3, which is a reading of 0.2 pp worse than expected and 0.1 pp worse than the previous publication (55.4).
"The manufacturing sector in the US continued to grow well in July, but it shows signs of fighting supply shortages, rising prices, and deteriorating exports," commented Chris Williamson, Chief Economist at IHS Markit.
The data published by the ISM institute were even worse. This report shows that despite the already pessimistic forecasts assuming a decline in the value of the index to 59.4 from 60.2, the final reading indicated a drop to the level of 58.1 points.
Let's now take a look at the SP500 technical picture after the reports were published. After the gap between the levels of 283.28 - 284.44 was filled, the market is still trading around the recent top at the level of 286.58. The move up was made on a positive and strong momentum, despite the fact that the market conditions remain overbought. The nearest support is seen at the level of 280.62 and the longer time frame trend remains up.
