S&P Global's flash US composite output index rose to 56.0 in August from 54.5, a 52-month high, and the coverage is uniformly 'US business is booming.' Underneath, services jumped to 56.8 while manufacturing slipped to 53.2. The factory slowdown has a stated mechanism that is not weak demand — fading safety-stock building and the worst supply delays in four years — and it resolves on a different clock than a demand story would.
The flash PMI is a preliminary survey of roughly 1,150 purchasing managers at US factories and service firms, published before the month ends and well before official statistics. It is a diffusion index: it measures how many firms report improving conditions, not how much output was produced. That makes it timely but qualitative. GDP and payrolls are measured, revised and released with a lag. The PMI is best used as an early directional signal that later data can confirm or contradict — and it has contradicted them before.
DrafterDaily takes apart the economic releases that get reported as a single number. What is underneath, what it means for your sector, and what the survey cannot tell you.
More finance analysisGrad PLUS lent up to the full cost of attendance. Its replacement caps professional students at $50,000 a year — against a medical-school year that averages $61,110. The difference does not disappear.
Fitch tracks sixteen perpetual non-traded BDCs. In Q2 2026, redemption requests averaged 10.3% of shares against a standard 5% cap, and ten of the sixteen breached it. Nothing broke — which is the uncomfortable part.
Nationally, asking prices are down about 2% and inventory is up 3.2% — a picture of orderly rebalancing. Underneath it, Austin's median list price is down 12.2% while San Francisco's inventory has fallen nearly 20%. Those are not variations around a mean.