Following today's crash in the US Manufacturing ISM, we now have the following snapshot of global manufacturing: only three countries are currently in contraction (sub 50 PMI) mode: Australia, Russia and France. Look for many more to join them if today's US print is a harbinger of things to come to the global manufacturing space.
[9]
We already commented on the US manufacturing tracker [10]. Here is Bank of America discussing the rest of the world.
On the first workday of a new month, global PMI manufacturing surveys are released around the world. That gives us an early read on the state of manufacturing. As the nearby table shows, out of the 22 countries that have reported so far, 13 reported improvements in their manufacturing sectors in January, while 8 recorded a weakening in their manufacturing sector and 1 was unchanged. A reading above 50 reflects expansion while below 50 indicates contraction. In this regard, there were only 3 countries in negative territory and 19 in positive. Of particular mention, Greece shifted from contraction to expansion.
Yeah, that Greek print: fade it, because the country which so many expect to enter a Grecovery in 2014, may already be in Grecession [11]: "In contrast to expectations of a 0.6 percent recovery after six years of recession, the Greek economy may in fact not grow this year and could even post a small contraction, the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) claims in its latest quarterly report that was made public on Thursday."