Tag Archives: Global Economy

No UK rate hikes this year and room for further Euro upside

The odds of a 25bp Bank of England rate hike at next week’s policy meeting are all but dead in my view following tepid GDP growth of 0.3% qoq in Q2 2017.

Moreover, UK GDP growth and inflation dynamics, allied to forthcoming changes in the composition of the Monetary Policy Council, point to the record-low policy rate of 0.25% remaining on hold for the remainder of the year.

Forecasting European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy, including the timing and modalities of changes to its Quantitative Easing program, is arguably a far trickier proposition.

While the ECB may be incentivised to slow the current rapid pace of Euro appreciation, at this stage I do not expect the ECB to try and to stop, let alone reverse, the Euro’s upward path.
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Chinese PMI very sensitive to underlying economic activity

The Federal Reserve has 23 more days worth of data and market developments to analyse before its policy meeting.

China’s official and (unofficial) Caixin manufacturing data for May will be released tomorrow and Friday before the usual deluge of monthly economic indicators. Markets tend to give weight to the early release of PMI data in the world’s second largest economy and the question is whether this is justified.

Looking at data for the past decade, there was a good correlation up till about 2012 between China’s official manufacturing PMI and exports, imports, industrial output, retail sales and GDP, with the added advantage of the PMI leading by a couple of months. However, since then these correlations on the surface appear to have broken down, even if we use the sub-components of headline PMI.

The main issue is seemingly one of calibration. Since 2012, the official manufacturing PMI has only fallen marginally in a narrow 49.0-51.7 range while monthly economic indicators have weakened considerably. If we shorten the time scale, the PMI’s correlations with monthly data again look reasonable.

Markets need to take into account this increased sensitivity of the PMI data, as small moves may ultimately be associated with significant changes in underlying economic activity.

Even so, the official manufacturing PMI has seemingly over-estimated China’s economic strength in recent months. An alternative view point is that monthly economic indicators are about to rebound quite sharply.

The unofficial Caxin manufacturing PMI data – which have been more volatile than the official measure – and the official non-manufacturing PMI have even over longer time-frames been somewhat better correlated with monthly economic indicators. They too point to a rebound in economic activity in coming months.

Please see Appendix for complete set of correlation charts.

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