Business Conditions: What's Going On?

摘要

Chip shipments to N. America are a "pulse" of domestic business conditions. They should correlate with domestic electronic assembly activity as they represent "total shipments to N. America from any source," rather than just local chip production. The January SLA data (Chart 1) was surprising: 1. SE Asian growth slowed noticeably—probably due to post-busy season inventory adjustments. 2. N. American grew 16.4% on a three-month basis—exceeding SE Asia for the first time since 1998!