US business activity hit a five-year high in September, but so did input costs. Good news for the dollar, or a warning sign?

S&P Global's flash US Composite PMI jumped to 58.4 in September, a 62-month high, with services and manufacturing both accelerating and job gains at their fastest pace in years. The same release said input costs rose at their fastest pace since October 2022 (full report).

That combination, faster growth and faster cost inflation together, doesn't point cleanly in one direction. Faster growth usually supports a currency by keeping interest-rate expectations firm. But rising costs, on top of a Federal Reserve that had already raised rates on 16 September (report), raise the question of whether the Fed's work is further from done than the market had priced, which cuts both ways depending on whether you think that's bullish (higher for longer) or a genuine inflation risk the market hasn't priced yet.

We'd like to hear how members read a release like this:

• Do you read strong growth and rising costs together as bullish for the dollar, as a risk, or as two separate signals you weigh differently?
• Does a PMI at a 62-month high change your expectations for the next jobs report or CPI print, or do you treat surveys and hard data as separate categories entirely (industrial production was flat in August, for comparison)?
• How much do you trust a flash PMI reading, built from roughly 80–90% of survey responses, to move a position, versus waiting for the final figure in early October?
• Did this release change anything about your own EUR/USD or DXY positioning?

Please share your own reasoning, not calls for others to copy. Posts that promise a direction or sell signals will be removed.