Factories gauge contracts in August

Tuesday’s data add to concerns a broader U.S. recession is coming.

A key U.S. factory gauge unexpectedly contracted for the first time since 2016, sending stocks and bond yields lower and boosting expectations for interest-rate cuts as global manufacturing woes deepen.

The Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers index fell to 49.1 in August, weaker than all forecasts in a Bloomberg survey of economists, data released Tuesday showed.

Figures below 50 indicate the manufacturing economy is generally shrinking. The group’s gauge of new orders dropped to a more than seven-year low, while the production index hit the lowest since late 2015.

The data add to concerns a broader U.S. recession is coming and may complicate the re-election chances of President Donald Trump, whose pledges to revive manufacturing have been a signature issue. At the same time, Trump’s escalating tariffs on imports from China have been a major reason behind factory weakness that threatens to spread to consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the world’s largest economy.

In the U.S. stock market, the ISM numbers torpedoed a morning rebound and left the S&P 500 poised for its worst loss in seven sessions, down as much as 1.2% to erase almost half of last week’s rally. The 10-year Treasury yield and the dollar fell.

Traders of fed funds futures boosted the amount of easing they expect from the U.S. central bank this year, following a July 31 quarter-point cut that was the first since 2008. For the next Fed decision on Sept. 18, investors increased bets on a half-point reduction but continued to lean toward a quarter-point cut.

“This piece of data is part of the puzzle that helps to push us into recession,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial Inc. “The ramifications of the trade war show up in the euro zone, in Asia and now in the U.S. If the deterioration in the U.S. continues, it’s going to feed into the overall labor market.”