If America is on the cusp of a “Goldilocks scenario,” then Europe may have to make do with cold porridge.

The latest data from S&P Global’s US Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), released Wednesday, shows business activity grew the fastest in over two years this month. Meanwhile, the equivalent measure for the eurozone showed little growth, and a surprise slump in Germany.

Wurst-Case Scenario

The US composite PMI, which accounts for services and manufacturing activity, rose to 55 this month from 54.8 in June — it was expected to dip slightly. Just as important, average prices for goods and services rose the slowest since January and the second-slowest since October 2020. Put these two together and the data is trending just right. 

“The flash PMI data signal a ‘Goldilocks’ scenario at the start of the third quarter, with the economy growing at a robust pace while inflation moderates,” said Chris Williamson, S&P Global’s chief business economist, in a report. The eurozone PMI, meanwhile, isn’t earning fairy-tale comparisons:

• The area’s July PMI composite index came in at 50.1, down from 50.8 in June, which Carsten Brzeski, ING Research’s global head of Macro, noted is “dangerously close” to the 50 threshold of contraction. France, the area’s second-largest economy, didn’t grow, but its 49.5 reading bested most estimates thanks to service-sector optimism buttressed by the Paris Olympics.
• Germany, the area’s biggest economy, unexpectedly contracted amid continuing manufacturing struggles, dropping to 48.7 from 50.4 in June, below the 50 threshold for the first time since March. Brzeski said previously-improving sentiment has been hit with a “cold shower… Not the relieving kind on a hot summer’s day, but rather an ice cold shower in the winter when the central heating is broken.”

Blunt Assessment: It’s not just one thing putting a damper on business. “With respect to the manufacturing sector, the main structural challenges include labor market shortages, an investment backlog in infrastructure, a lack of digitalization, and relatively high energy prices,” said Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank. “However, the most significant factor impacting the German manufacturing sector is the increasing loss of global market share of German car and machinery producers to competitors in China. Unfortunately, this problem is here to stay.”

Big Pharma’s post-COVID big bet is sputtering.

Pfizer, Moderna, and GlaxoSmithKline have been among the companies developing vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The thinking was that in a world where COVID-19 vaccines are less lucrative, RSV could fill the gap on their balance sheets. However, a recent bit of guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has knocked the wind out of the RSV vaccine market.

Age is Just a Number

Pfizer and Moderna have seen big dips in their share prices ever since COVID-19 vaccine rollouts had their intended effect: good news for the world, bad news for the companies’ margins. In November 2023, Moderna booked a $3.6 billion loss, due in large part to unsold COVID-19 vaccines. 

RSV isn’t shaping up as the Next Big Disease. In June, a CDC committee revised the age band for those who should receive routine RSV vaccines. Previously, it recommended regular vaccines for adults over 60, but that number has gone up to 75. According to data given to the Financial Times by analytics firm Airfinity, the market is already symptomatic:

• Airfinity said it had forecast US sales of RSV vaccines to hit $3.7 billion this year; it’s now marked its forecast down to $2.2 billion, a 40% drop.
• It also revised its annual forecast for US sales by 2030 from $4.7 billion to $1.7 billion, an almost 64% drop.

Weight-loss Woes: In more recent years, weight-loss drugs have burst onto the scene like the — oh yeah, we’re going there — joy-bearing Kool-Aid Man, but even they can run up against infrastructural challenges. Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug Wegovy has not had the blockbuster outing it hoped to achieve in the UK, the FT reports, because the country’s National Health Service does not have enough weight-loss clinics to dole out prescriptions.

There’s a thin line between an explanation and an excuse, and as the company that crashed around 8.5 million computers around the world, CrowdStrike is very much hoping its mea culpa is taken as something closer to the former.

On Wednesday, the cybersecurity colossus offered a candid assessment of what led to the largest outage of the computer age. And, as the world reboots, the winners (they really do exist) and losers from the entire debacle are becoming clearer.

Strike Out

To put the incident report CrowdStrike published Wednesday into layman’s terms: because of a bug, its internal testing software failed to identify the faulty code in a software update that it pushed to millions of devices. Basically, a bug kept its bug-detecting system from working. To keep that from happening again, CrowdStrike said it will add testing layers and roll out updates in phases. Experts in cybersecurity say there’s a balance between too much and not enough testing, but we now know what can happen when there’s too little. 

Still, pain from the widespread disruption — particularly to systems reliant on Microsoft products — will vary:

• Not including Microsoft, the outage will likely cost US Fortune 500 companies around $5.4 billion, according to projections from insurer Parametrix. Banks and healthcare systems will likely be the most impacted. 
• Still, insurance firms will likely only be on the hook for around $1 billion of those losses, per Parametrix. According to a Fitch Ratings report, “​​lack of insurance coverage, high deductibles, sublimits and time element periods for business interruption claims” will limit insured losses.

“Although standard cyber insurance covers cloud downtime due to security failure, operational failure or system failure of the insured’s own operations, it typically does not cover downtime due to non-malicious cyber events at a third-party network service provider,” Loretta Worters, a spokesperson at the Insurance Information Institute, told Reuters.

Wiz Kids: Another low-key winner: Wiz, the Israeli cybersecurity startup that walked away from acquisition talks with Google to instead pursue an IPO on its own. Per a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, the CrowdStrike outage led the firm to assess it was worth more than the $23 billion Google offered. Crisis, meet opportunity.