Although we noticed some concern about the ephemeral nature of optimism regarding business conditions, the current conditions component expanded to 64.3 in February, compared to 60 last month. The majority of respondents noted unchanged conditions, and the share indicating worse conditions edged down slightly, leading to the modest improvement seen in the topline measure.

This month we asked the first in a series of occasional questions about matters that may affect business conditions. The inaugural topic concerned the effect that congestion at ports of entry in the U.S. had on panel members' businesses. Nearly 43 percent reported little or no effect, but a substantial minority of almost 36 percent reported that the bottlenecks had affected their businesses a lot or a great deal. One respondent indicated having to switch to air freight because of shipping stagnation.

Read the full report.