The Chinese Manufacturing PMI spent most of the past four and a half years straddling just the good side of 50. In fact, it hasn’t been above 52 since early 2012 – a quite remarkable feat of low variation. This fruitlessness is somewhat emblematic of China’s dilemma; no matter what they do the industrial and manufacturing sector will not catch [...]
This is fast becoming the “12% recession”, as economists and media commentary rushes to quell any notion of systemic economic retrenchment. If it isn’t “the dollar” or “overseas demand”, then surely the dramatic (and always “unexpected”) reversal of US manufacturing is but a novelty to be regarded as inconsequential on Yellen’s road to the Promised Land. Reuters author Lucia Mutikani [...]
Today was, apparently, the perfect storm of downbeat PMI’s. As usual, sentiment surveys have limited value except in cases of outliers or in unanimity. There was some of both across the world’s manufacturing updates. First, which was certainly most watched, China’s PMI fell to a three-year low below 50, further suggesting that there isn’t yet a bottom for how much [...]
There are major problems with PMI’s as anything like a useful indicator of anything actually useful. However, what has taken place recently particularly with regard to the Chinese version is outright silly, obtuse or intentionally misleading. Only one week ago, the HSBC and Markit "flash" PMI for China manufacturing rose from 50.2 to 50.5. The headline of the Bloomberg article [...]
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