Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Unexpectedly Falls To -2

UPDATE: The Kansas City Fed's monthly manufacturing survey is out.

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The headline number fell to -2 from last month's upwardly-revised reading of -1, defying consensus expectations of a rise into positive territory.

Below is a breakdown of the sub-components of the index (click to enlarge):

Below are comments from respondents to the survey on the state of the economy:

“Economic uncertainty has made our customers reluctant to place orders more than a month in advance and it appears most are cutting their inventory on hand which further depresses orders.”

“Since Congress continues to delay making firm decisions we are less optimistic about our ability to expand in Q1 and Q2. We are again delaying decisions until government policy is more certain.”

“Many of our end users are not committing to contracts until they see Congress acting on spending and debt limit issues.”

“Lack of commitment to spending cuts has seriously damaged confidence in our customer base.”

“The health care act is still a large uncertainty for our customers.”

“Some orders were delayed. It appears that the capital budgets that were put on hold are starting to be released.”

“U.S. pipeline projects will suffer in 2013, which will affect us negatively.”

“The ongoing fiscal problems and uncertainty have a negative impact on our outlook for the military portion or our business.”

“The fiscal cliff was a short term issue – we make decisions looking at long term trends. It may have slowed some of our sales on a short term basis, but it was probably just delaying sales that will be made later.”

“Fiscal issues are not truly resolved and we remain cautious relative to all hiring, investment, and other business expansion.”

Click here for the full release >

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ORIGINAL: Minutes away from the release of the Kansas City Fed's monthly manufacturing survey, due out at 11 AM ET.

Economists expect the index to rise to 1 after a -2 reading last month.

Any number above 0 indicates improving manufacturing conditions.

The release will be interesting because we've seen some really ugly prints from other regional manufacturing indices this month.

However, today the flash US PMI index, published by Markit, soared to 56.1 from last month's 54.0 reading, whereas economists expected it to fall to 53.0.

We will have the release LIVE at 11 AM ET. Click here to refresh for updates >