Global PMIs maintain the rage

From Macquarie:

 Industry/manufacturing is a key sector for metals demand, and the PMIs are a timely indicator of its health. They do not always lead official data but they are available much earlier, with March’s PMIs all now out, whereas equivalent official data will only be released in one to two months’ time.  March saw further gains. Aggregating the manufacturing PMIs of 151 countries plus the 19 country Eurozone (weighted by their share of global manufacturing output), we estimate globally the manufacturing PMI gained 0.1 points MoM to 53.9, its highest since 1Q 2011 (fig 1). How this will translate into the official output data is not an exact science, but the past relationship, shown in fig 2, suggests output growth YoY (on 3m moving average) could accelerate from its current 3.0% to 4.0% in the next few months. This would be a very strong figure by recent standards.

 By country, on a MoM (fig 3) basis the biggest gains were seen in Brazil, India, Indonesia and importantly given its heft, the Eurozone. But it was not all good news: the US, Japan and the UK fell back, albeit to a slower expansion not a contraction. On a YoY basis (fig 4) the improvement globally is clear, seeing the US and Eurozone enjoy a sizeable upswing, China positive growth, and even laggards Brazil and Russia improving. Only Mexico has gotten notably worse.