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Economic indicators - M

List of indicators - M:

Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories and Orders
Manufacturing and Trade Inventories
Michigan consumer sentiment index
Monetary Base
Money supply (M1, M2, M3)
Mortgage Bankers Association Weekly Survey

Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories and Orders

Information about new orders, unfilled order backlogs, shipments, and inventories for both durable and nondurable goods at U.S. factories is called the Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders.

This data is valuable because factories' inventories in relation to shipments, when averaged over two or three months, can show whether inventory imbalances are present or developing at the factory level.

Manufacturing and Trade Inventories

Manufacturing and Trade Inventories is a review that reflects the level of business stocks at the retail, wholesale and manufacturing levels.

The report includes inventory-to-sales ratio that can be useful to deduce if speed of stock building corresponds to demand trends. This survey is frequently associated with manufacturers' shipments, order and inventory trends. Inventory data are less reliable than other statistics and has to be updated commonly.

This index reflects trends in overall volume of mortgage applications received by MBA members. Mortgage refinancing and purchase mortgage are represented by two sub-indices.

Mortgage Bankers Association Weekly Survey indicates changes in mortgage refinancing activities and housing transactions, which are very important measures of total consumer expenditures, because home purchases is usually the reason for other expenses.

Money Supply Measures

In the economy, there are measures of money circulating (M1, M2, M3, and L) which differ in inclusion of various cash equivalents. Outstanding credit market debt of federal, state, and local governments as well as the debt of private non-financial sector is reflected by the Debt figure.

Monetarist economic theory says that changes in the money supply over time should lead to predictable changes in nominal economic output. Growth acceleration or growth retardation considered affecting real economic activity in the short term, but the results of the long-term money growth are still at issue. Nevertheless, the break down of these relationships began at the 1980s because of deregulation and globalization.

Monetary Base