Out Fox The $treet

Industrial production continues to increase at a solid clip per the Federal Reserve report released this morning. While the market fretted during the summer about a double dip recession, the 1.2% increase in July was telling a different story. Now after a couple of flat months, industrial production has soared another 0.7% for October. This makes the year over year increase at 3.9%. Capacity utilization ticked up to 77.8 from 77.3 also beating estimates. Interesting to note that this level of utilization is still below the '90-91 recession low of 78.8. Still lots of room for industrial companies to increase profits before having to expand. The major group that continues to stick out is the 10.2% increase in business equipment. Also noteworthy is that it has been up over 1% sequentially in four of the last six months. Typically this isn't a report that I review very heavily, but it caught my attention that growth remains strong and the numbers continue to beat estimates. ...

As world economies limp through weak data over the last two months, the market needs to look no further then Japan. After the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, industrial production plunged 15.5%. In April, it only bounced back 1%. While better then a decline, it was still a anemic rebound considering the huge plunge. Clearly signals of the short term impact to the global economy. The good news though is that companies in Japan expect a major recovery in May and June. The May industrial production number is expected to soar by 8% and June up over 7.7%. Nearly back to the pre quake levels at that point. Output rose 1.0 percent last month, below analysts' median 2.8 percent forecast, but manufacturers sharply increased their forecast for May, predicting output would rise 8.0 percent compared with the previous 2.7 percent forecast, data from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry showed on Tuesday. Companies expect the recovery to continue in June with production seen ris...