Texas factories graded August at 11.6 after seasonal adjustment. The answers they gave came to 8.7. July's raw reading was negative.
August's last session closed thin and lower. Monday's new number came in two versions.
All three major indexes finished down. The Dow fell furthest of the three. Volume stayed light into month-end.
Crude rose into the close. US forces had struck Iranian launchers near Hormuz on Sunday. Gold slipped and longer Treasury yields rose.
The three-month Treasury yield closed Friday at 3.90%. The effective funds rate held at 3.63% all week. Bill yields closed Friday above the overnight rate at every maturity.
Monday's factory release came out of Texas. It reads two ways.
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Texas factories graded August at 11.6. The answers they gave came to 8.7.
The Dallas Fed's August survey went to 112 factories and sixty-nine replied. Orders, output, shipments and capacity use all broadened.
The headline is seasonally adjusted. The Dallas Fed publishes the raw series too.
Twenty-one of the sixty-nine said conditions improved. Fifteen said they worsened. Thirty-three reported no change.
That is a net of six firms. Six out of sixty-nine is 8.7.
Adjustment carries it to 11.6. It carried July from minus 3.1 to plus 1.3.
More plants told the survey July got worse than better. The published July number said the opposite.
Kalshi runs a book on Friday's national payroll figure. The odds of topping 80,000 jobs sit near 25%.
That release samples about 119,000 employers. It reports a level, not a balance of opinions.
The Answer Before the Adjustment
Seasonal adjustment is not a distortion. It strips out the part of a month that repeats every year. On a small balance it can still change the sign. July is the case, and it is August's base.
The market's own factory-jobs book has a measurement problem of its own.
On Kalshi a book prices Pennsylvania's factory payroll for this year. The odds of a 2026 average above 545,000 sit near 95%. Ten thousand jobs higher they fall to near 55%.
That gap is the chance of landing inside a 10,000-job band. That is partly conviction and partly arithmetic.
The book settles on a twelve-month average, and averages absorb late movement. It settles on state estimates that get rewritten once a year.
So the contract prices a figure that is still being written. That state series prints again this month.
The Average That Gets Rewritten
An annual average is the slowest form a labour number takes. Late hiring lands in it diluted. That yearly rewrite can move it again. That is why the band looks tight without anybody being certain. Precision in a price is not precision in the data.
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Three national readings print within the same minute this morning.
None of them is a district survey.
The national factory gauge covers August. Job openings cover July. June's reading came in at 7,359,000.
That June figure gets restated inside this morning's release. July construction spending arrives with them and revises for months afterwards.
Fifty divides growth from contraction on the national scale. Polymarket built a book of ten buckets on this morning's print. Only the lowest reaches under that line.
Polymarket runs the July openings in eight buckets. June's reading would fall in the fourth of them.
Three of the four books here settle on federal data. The fourth settles on a trade association's index. Two of those releases print this morning.
Where the Books Are Written
Contracts get written where settlement is unambiguous. That is a judgement about the source, not about relevance. A district survey moves a headline. A national series moves a position. The difference is how much evidence each carries.
Both factory gauges this week are diffusion indexes. They are not built the same way.
Dallas nets the plants reporting a rise against those reporting a fall. Every plant on that panel carries one vote. The published version is then seasonally adjusted.
The national gauge is built differently. It stratifies across eighteen industries. Each is weighted by its share of the economy. Its headline blends five readings.
It also counts half of every unchanged answer as growth. A month in which nothing moves prints exactly fifty on it.
Neither method reports magnitude. Both report which way respondents leaned and how widely.
That is the ceiling on what this week's surveys can say. The larger federal samples do the rest.
What Neither Index Reports
A diffusion index answers how many, never how much. Weighting fixes the industry mix. It leaves that ceiling where it was. August is now on the record as a broad month in Texas. How broad and how large are separate questions. Only one has been answered.
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Texas graded August at 11.6 after adjustment. The answers underneath came to 8.7.
July is the month that changed sign. The firms said worse and the headline said better.
Priced already: bill yields above the overnight rate across the front.
Not priced: which version of July the autumn is measured from.
The Texas replies were in by 26 August. The national gauge, job openings and construction spending all print this morning. Payrolls follow on 4 September.
Capital moves early. Coverage catches up. The gap between the two is worth watching.