Confirming what we already knew last night [4], HSBC just announced their final manufacturing PMI (revised slightly higher from the flash PMI) but confirming - via their data - that China is now in its sixth month of manufacturing contraction. Of course this is entirely irrelevant as last night China itself pointed out via its manufacturing PMI data that all was well and in fact the Chinese economy is expanding at its fastest in 14 months. The April HSBC print was modestly higher than the March print (so green shooters will be happy with their second derivatives) but the divergence between HSBC and China on this data point remains vast and digging into the sub-indices [5] we see manufacturing output decreased for the second month in a row, new business fell marginally, but employment was down at the fastest rate in over three years as the need to streamline workforce numbers was cited by many as a response to lower output requirements.
[6]
And updated chart from last night's post...
[7]
Source: Markit Economics [5]