And while CAT's impact may have changed in the past decade, it still remains an important beacon of trends in the industrial and manufacturing economy. And unfortunately based on its latest retail sales published today, a lot of pain is coming.

In May, Caterpillar's machinery sales dropped by the most in over a decade both across the world and in the Americas, where the company has extended plant shutdowns.

As shown below, North America sales plunged 36% on a rolling three-month basis, the most since January 2010 and far worse than the 27% drop posted in April, while sales in Latin America had the biggest decline since December 2016. And despite a modest slowdown in the deterioration across Asia/Pac which declined by just 1% following a 22% drop in March as China has successfully re-emerged from its February lockdown, overall global sales dropped by the most since the start of 2010.