Its April Fools, which means we’ll get reliable data out of China today…including the monthly services and manufacturing PMI (purchasing managers index).
The former has come in a bit early at 53.8 points – above 50 denotes expansion, below 50 is contraction – a nice increase from the 52.7 level for February.
Manufacturing just printed, and its expansion time – 50.2 points – expected was 49.4 prior was a dour 49 points.
Even though structural rebalancing should view and support the services or non-manufacturing release more so, markets are still fixated on the manufacturing version. This should be good eating for them although the Aussie dollar just popped 20 pips to be at 76.80 against the USD.
We now await the more reliable (?) private survey, the Caixin/Markit version which is due mid afternoon, plus the internal elements of the survey.