HEADS UP: The world’s biggest economies will release their November manufacturing PMI reports starting at 7:01 PM EST, and this is our scorecard.
Economists will want to see if the Asian economies are continuing the improvement they saw in last month’s PMI reports. They’ll also want to see if Europe’s manufacturing downturn is continuing to accelerate.
On Friday, China’s National Bureau of Statistics released the country’s official PMI. The number increased from 50.2 in October to 50.6, which was a bit shy of the 50.8 expected by economists. However, the internal measures of the report confirm that growth probably bottomed in Q3 and that the economy was accelerating again.
At the beginning of each month, Markit, HSBC, RBC, JP Morgan and several other major data gathering institutions publish the latest local readings of the manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI) for countries around the world.
Each reading is based on surveys of hundreds of companies. Read more about it at Markit.
These are not the most closely followed data points. However, the power of the insights is unparalleled. Jim O’Neill, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, believes the PMI numbers are among the most reliable economic indicators in the world. BlackRock’s Russ Koesterich thinks it’s one of the most underrated indicators.
