The marquee gauge of US factory activity slipped further into contraction territory in May, the first of this week’s top-tier macro releases showed.

At 48.7, ISM manufacturing missed estimates (consensus was 49.5), validating the notion that March’s fleeting push above the 50 demarcation line separating expansion from contraction was a false dawn.

May’s print was the 18th contraction-territory headline in 19 releases. Notably, the new orders gauge fell to 45.4, weak indeed. “Demand remains elusive as companies demonstrate an unwillingness to invest due to current monetary policy and other conditions,” ISM’s Tim Fiore said Monday.

S&P Global’s survey told a different story entirely. The headline print on that gauge of US factory activity was revised up from the flash reading to 51.3, helped along by — wait for it — a pickup in new orders!

“It was pleasing to see new orders return to growth in May following a blip in April,” Andrew Harker, Economics Director at S&P Global Market Intelligence, remarked. “Although modest, the expansion in new work bodes well for production in the coming months.”

Without casting aspersions (and while reminding readers that these surveys do often “disagree”), I gotta tell you: Diametrically opposed readings on activity gauges which supposedly measure the same thing underscore my contention that obsessing over macro releases is generally a waste of time. The only saving grace is that life itself’s a waste of time, so if you like life, then macro releases are in good company.

Many of you would vehemently disagree, but… well, you’d be wrong. Note that everyone with a Substack letter or a macro “service” to sell you has a cycle model or some such “proprietary” indicator they claim (implicitly or otherwise) is capable of enhancing investment returns above and beyond what you could get in an index fund. They’re all lying. Self-evidently. If such claims were true, those folks wouldn’t need to sell you a newsletter or any “service.” They’d just build their models it a trading algo, hit “go” and retire. The very last thing they’d do is share the secret sauce with you. Or anybody else. So, yeah, everybody’s a charlatan. You can quote me on that. None of those people like me anyway.

Anyway, ISM prices paid fell to 57, down from 60.9 the prior month. That’s good news to the extent it suggests price pressures on the goods side aren’t becoming more pervasive. Or maybe they are. Because according to S&P Global’s survey, “cost pressures continued to build” in May, when inflation was “the strongest in just over a year.”

Gosh, who’s right?! Spoiler alert: Nobody. Or at least not on purpose. The only way any of us — you, me, the sell-side, the buy-side, economists or any other “macro observers” and “market participants” — is ever right about any of this is by accident. To say otherwise is to mistake luck for acumen, an error which can (and will) be ruinous if it manifests as hubris. The only “good” traders are the ones with inside information.