One month does not make a trend: the pace of sales is read over three months, leaving out exceptional orders
8 October 2026, 16:27
On 7 October Destatis, the German statistics office, announced that production in industry, energy and construction rose by 2.0% in August compared with July. The day before, Destatis had reported that orders received by manufacturing over the same period had fallen by 10.6%. Read side by side, they seem to describe two different countries.
The two releases also contain the figures needed to read them properly. The jump in production came mainly from construction, up 9.3%: industry alone, which is the same scope as the orders, grew by 0.6%. On the other side, the slump came almost entirely from "other transport equipment", that is aircraft, ships, trains and military vehicles, down 61.5% after more than doubling the month before: excluding large orders, August orders were practically flat, at minus 0.1%.
Then there is the quarter, which Destatis itself describes as less volatile. From June to August, compared with the previous three months, production grew by 0.4%. Orders rose by 1.3% in total, but excluding large orders they fell by 2.6%. The most important figure was not in the headlines: once exceptional orders are removed, ordinary demand is falling, and the biggest contracts were hiding it.
The pace measures how fast a business is moving compared with plan
In controlling this reading has a name: turnover momentum, meaning the pace at which revenue comes in compared with what had been planned. The starting point is the year's turnover target, spread over the twelve periods according to historical seasonality: in a company that closes for two weeks in summer, August is worth less than October. That is the monthly budget.
Each set of actual figures is compared with its share, and the difference is added to those already accumulated. That total shows whether the business is moving faster or slower than it had decided at the start of the year. It does not measure how much it has sold, but at what pace.
A single period contains things that will not happen again
The figure for a single month mixes the real pace with events that do not repeat: working days, holidays falling a week earlier or later, a large delivery that slips, an exceptional order signed in exactly those four weeks. In the German August figures at least two of these are visible: large orders, which move orders by more than ten points, and company holidays, which fell more in August than the year before and which, according to Destatis, partly explain the fall in car production.
It is the same reason why someone who steps on the scales the Monday after a wedding does not conclude they have put on weight. They look at their weight over a few weeks in a row, knowing that one lunch counts for little in the total.
How to measure it: three periods in a row, with exceptional orders kept apart
The rule is simple to state. If the cumulative variance from budget stays on the same side for at least three consecutive months, the year's estimates are revised: upwards if the business is moving faster than planned, downwards if it is slowing. Before that threshold the figure is recorded and looked at, but it does not change decisions.
The second precaution is the one Destatis uses. Exceptional orders, those that will not be repeated because of their size or customer, are kept on a separate line. The pace is read on what remains, because that is where you can see whether ordinary business is speeding up or slowing down. An extraordinary supply contract within a good quarter can hide a customer base that is shrinking.
The tool that brings the two together is the Rolling Forecast: the accumulated variance is redistributed over the periods still open, with the same seasonality, and the expected result for the year is recalculated every time new actual figures come in.
The typical mistake is changing forecasts on the latest figure
The most common mistake is not ignoring the numbers but reacting to the most recent one. A brilliant August leads to buying more raw material, hiring, asking for a larger credit line; a big contract signed in July makes the year seem already secured. Conversely, a weak period leads to cutting spending that was needed. These are decisions taken on a figure that the next set of actuals may contradict.
In a company's own accounts there are three questions. How far above or below the cumulative budget since January is the business? For how many consecutive periods has the variance been on the same side? And how much of that difference comes from one or two orders that will not be there next year?
Destatis accompanied its August figure with the quarter and with orders stripped of large contracts, and beneath a brilliant headline a fall in ordinary demand appeared. A monthly profit and loss account can be read in the same way.
This article was prompted by a news item published in Reuters on 7 October 2026.