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Renita Jablonski: The Commerce Department releases numbers on factory orders this morning. This follows yesterday’s manufacturing survey, which helped take the markets a little higher. But as Ashley Milne-Tyte tells us, with so much volatility in the market these days, these reports aren’t always what they appear.

Ashley Milne-Tyte: The factory orders data is what David Wyss calls a hard number. He’s chief economist at Standard & Poors. Yesterday’s manufacturing data, on the other hand:

David Wyss: This measures how purchasing managers are feeling and sort of what they’re seeing. This is a survey, this is not a hard number. But I think it is a good measure of what they’re seeing out there and how optimistic they’re feeling about their industry.

Wyss says factory orders could boost the markets today, just as the manufacturing index did yesterday. But that, he says, will have more to do with the high price of certain commodities than a growing economy.

Wyss: We know we’re gonna get a big increase in oil-related orders because just of the price increase. That’s not necessarily good, so you have to sort of take the energy items out of the index.

He’s not expecting the markets to take a big jump, even if numbers are higher than expected — he says there’s just too much other bad news out there for that.

In New York, I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.