Archive - Sep 1, 2015 - Story

First the good news: of the 28 global regions that have reported PMIs so far (the US Markit PMI is due later today), 18 posted a print of over 50, or indicating manufacturing expansion.
Now the bad news: more than two-thirds of PMIs in August deteriorated compared to July suggesting that while the global economy is not in a recession yet, absent some dramatic improvement, a global economic contraction is just around the corner.

It appears low oil prices are not awesome for everyone. For the second quarter in a row, Canadian GDP dropped (-0.5%) pushing America's northern neighbor back into recession. What is ironic is that this was better than the 1% drop that was expected and so CAD is strengthening.

Whatever the message is in these mega intra-week rebounds (if there is one), we're afraid it just hasn’t been the “out of the woods” bullish sign that many were hoping it was.

While the market's attention overnight was focused on China's crumbling manufacturing and service PMI, data which was already hinted in the flash PMI reports earlier in August, the real stunner came not from China but from South Korea, which last night reported an unprecedented 14.7% collapse in exports, far worse than the -5.9% consensus estimate, and more than 4 times worse than July's 3.4%. The number is critical because not only do exports account for about half of South Korea's GDP but because it also happens to be the first major exporting country to report monthly trade data. That makes it the perfect barometer of global trade flows, or as the case may be, the canary in the global trade coalmine. It also confirms what we reported just one week ago when we said that "Global Trade Is In Freefall."

Overnight, China decided to take steps to reduce "macro financial risks." And by that they mean "do something quick to help ease pressure on the yuan" and by extension, on the PBoC’s rapidly depleting FX reserves. To that end, starting October 15 banks will have to hold the equivalent of 20% of clients' FX forward positions with the PBoC, where the money will sit, frozen, for a year, at 0% interest.

• Charting the Market: New Month, Same China (BBG)
• China jitters send stocks tumbling (Reuters)
• Oil falls on weak China factory data (Reuters)
• Euro zone factory growth eases in August despite modest price rises (Reuters)
• Euro-Area Joblessness Falls to Lowest Level Since Early 2012 (BBG)
• Clinton friend advised on U.S. politics, foreign policy (Reuters)
• Korea exports slump as Asia's woes deepen (Reuters)

Just like the last time when Chinese flash PMI data came out at the lowest level since the financial crisis, so overnight when both the official Chinese manufacturing and service PMI data, as well as the Caixin final PMI,s confirmed China's economy has not only ground to a halt but is now contracting with the official manufacturing data the lowest in 3 years and the first contraction in 6 months, stocks around the globe tumbled on concerns another major devaluation round by the PBOC is just around the corner with the drop led by the Shanghai Composite which plunged as much as 4% before, the cavalry arrived and bought every piece of SSE 50 index of China's biggest companies  it could find, and in a rerun of yestterday sent it to a green close, with the SHCOMP closing just -1.23% in the red. So much for the "no interventions" myth. We wonder which journalist will take the blame for today's rout.