Lifted by industrial production, the national activity index jumped to a much better-than-expected 0.12 in July following contraction of minus 0.33 in June and minus 0.18 in May. The 3-month average, however, is little changed, at minus 0.13 versus June's minus 0.15 and remains in the negative column a zone indicating sub-par historical growth where it has been since November last year.

The good news in July's report is a 0.18-point contribution from industrial production that followed a 36-point negative contribution in June. But production data can be choppy and continued gains, especially given mostly negative indications from various business surveys, is far from certain.

The consumer reading (personal consumption and housing) provided a marginal 0.02 lift in July with the outlook for this component also uncertain, split between what are positive indications for retail spending but, given the ongoing spike in mortgage rates, negative indications for housing.

Employment was marginally negative in July, at minus 0.02, while sales, orders and inventories was moderately negative at minus 0.05.

Today's 8:30 data, which also included better-than-expected jobless claims results and mixed durable goods results, leave Econoday's Consensus Divergence Index at plus 19 to indicate that recent US data, on net, are coming in on the high side of expectations, a trend which if extended through the next several weeks would point to another rate hike at September's Federal Reserve policy meeting.

The national activity index is expected to hold steady at a weak minus 0.30 in July versus minus 0.32 in June that was pulled lower by general weakness outside of employment which, nevertheless, was nearly flat.

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) is a monthly index that tracks overall economic activity and inflationary pressures. The CFNAI is a weighted average of 85 existing monthly indicators of national economic activity. It is constructed to have an average value of zero and a standard deviation of one. Since economic activity tends toward trend growth over time, a positive index reading corresponds to growth above trend and a negative index reading corresponds to growth below trend.

This index is unique among regional Federal Reserve Bank indexes in that it is national in scope. Investors are eager to have insight into economic growth and inflation. This index combines 85 diverse and already released indicators from four broad categories -- production and income; employment, unemployment, and hours; personal consumption and housing; and sales, orders, and inventories -- into an overall index to measure economic performance. The index provides another measure with which investors can measure overall growth.