After soaring unexpectedly to two-year highs in February (as stocks ignored the global disruptions), Philly Fed’s Business Outlook Survey has collapsed in March. From 36.7 in February, Philly Fed plunged to -12.7 (massively worse than the +8 estimate from clearly cognitively challenged analysts). That is the weakest level since September 2011…

This is the biggest drop in Phily Fed… ever…

Under the hood – everything tumbled…

• March prices paid fell to 4.8 vs 16.4
• New orders fell to -15.5 vs 33.6
• Employment fell to 4.1 vs 9.8
• Shipments fell to 0.2 vs 25.2
• Delivery time fell to -9.1 vs 2.7
• Inventories fell to 1.7 vs 11.8
• Prices received fell to 6.8 vs 17.1
• Unfilled orders fell to -7.4 vs 7.4
• Average workweek fell to 0.5 vs 10.3

And worse still, the outlooks plunged…

• Six-month outlook fell to 35.2 vs 45.4
• Six-month outlook for capex fell to 12.0 vs 29.8

New Orders crashed and jobs are set to fall further…

So the question is – WTF were people thinking in February?

Source: ZeroHedge