Invesco QQQ (QQQ): ETF Research Reports In a sense, this is good news: everyone knows oil prices have spiked, but on the producer level, not much month-over-month inflation beyond it is evident in last month’s read. The March read on the Empire State Manufacturing Survey posted a big disappointment this morning: -11.8% on the headline, below an expected print of around +6% and the worst we’ve seen since May 2020 — still in the early months of the pandemic.