U.S. Stocks turned positive in late trading Monday after the Institute for Supply Management corrected data it had released earlier in the day that showed the economy may be slowing.
ISM, a private firm whose reports are widely followed by investors, had initially said that its manufacturing index slowed to 53.2 in May from April’s reading of 54.9. The findings showed that manufacturing activity increased for the 12th straight month, but that the amount fell short of of the 55.5 estimate by economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
Research firm Stone & McCarthy and others issued reports and took to Twitter to lament what they described as errors by ISM, which issued two successive corrections. ISM eventually settled on a corrected 55.4 after initially revising the monthly index to 56, The Wall Street Journal reported. Representatives at ISM didn’t return Coins2Day‘s requests for comment.
“The source of the error is that the ISM used the previous month’s seasonal adjustment factors for April in calculating the May seasonally adjusted figures and not the May adjustment figures,” Stone & McCarthy wrote in a research note.
The news gained traction on Twitter, and eventually sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average into modestly positive territory, even though ISM hasn’t officially updated the figures on the group’s website. Several media reports quoted ISM’s Bradley Holcomb in confirming there was an error to the May data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped after the IMS report was published at 10 ET, shedding nearly 34 points at its lowest level. But less than an hour later, the DJIA recovered, and the index is now up over 20 points as it heads into the close.
