Note: Travelling week

CHINA PMIs

Manufacturing sector expansion accelerates

The headline seasonally adjusted Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI®)  rose to 51.5 in November, up from 50.3 in October. Rising further past the 50.0 neutral mark, the latest data signalled that conditions in the manufacturing sector improved for a second straight month. The pace of growth was the fastest since June and above the series average.

Central to the latest advancement in manufacturing sector conditions was greater new business inflows. Incoming new orders placed with Chinese manufacturers increased amongst the fastest rate in three-and-a-half
years. A renewed rise in export orders also supported the rise in overall new orders.

Panellists revealed that better underlying demand conditions, new product launches and stockpiling following the US election were amongst the reasons for the rise in new work.

Demand for consumer goods was particularly strong.

Production levels increased on the back of higher new work, rising at the quickest rate since June, with intermediate goods makers recording the fastest rate of growth among the monitored segments.

A second successive month of backlog accumulation was meanwhile observed in the Chinese manufacturing sector, though firms remained cautious about hiring. Headcounts declined for a third straight month in November due to resignations and redundancies. The rate of job shedding eased from October and was modest, however.

Meanwhile, purchasing activity and stocks of purchases both increased in the latest survey period. Anecdotal evidence suggested that rising production requirements led Chinese manufacturers to build safety stock. Post-production inventory also rose in November with instances of outbound shipment delays being mentioned. In contrast, lead times for the delivery of inputs stabilised after lengthening through the past five months.

Turning to prices, average input prices increased at the fastest pace in five months as raw material costs were reported to have risen. In turn, firms shared their additional cost burdens with clients, leading to the quickest gain in selling prices since October 2023.

Export charges continued to fall marginally, however, with international pricing power impacted by competition.

Finally, sentiment in the Chinese manufacturing sector improved in the penultimate month of the year. The level of confidence was the highest since March. Firms signalled hopes that better economic conditions and government policies can support sales in the year ahead.

That said, it is worth noting that the downward pressure facing the economy remains prominent, marked by continued contraction of employment, indicating the effect of economic stimulus is yet to be felt in the labor market and businesses’ confidence in expanding workforce needs to be strengthened.

While the economic downturn appears to be bottoming out, it needs further consolidation. The consistency and effectiveness of those additional stimulus measures deserves close attention. The structural and cyclical pressures facing the economy are expected to continue, coupled with the likelihood of continued accumulation of external uncertainties, which requires sufficient policy buffers.

• China’s Factory Activity Expands in Sign of Slow Recovery Official PMI rises to 50.3 in Nov. from 50.1 in Oct.

The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index was 50.3, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday, above the 50 mark that separates expansion and contraction. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for a gain to 50.2, from 50.1 in October.

The non-manufacturing measure of activity in construction and services slipped to 50 in November from the October reading of 50.2. That compares with a forecast of 50.3. The composite index was unchanged at 50.8.

Goldman Sachs: “In October, both official and private measures of factory activity exceeded analyst expectations, while home sales rose for the first time this year. Infrastructure investment was steady and the urban jobless rate fell in October to the lowest in four months.”

• Asian Manufacturing PMIs Send Positive Signals But Tariff Threat Tempers Upside Asia’s export-oriented economies face risks from Trump’s potential tariffs on U.S. imports

(…) Hopes for a pickup in sales and demand bolstered South Korean firms’ 12-month outlook for output, and drove Taiwanese manufacturers’ confidence to a three-month high, the data indicated. New export orders also rose, touching a four-month peak in South Korea and climbing to the highest since February 2022 in Taiwan.

In Taiwan, “Asia, Europe and North America were all cited as sources of higher demand, which is impressive in the context of the underlying weakness presently apparent in much of the global manufacturing economy,” said Paul Smith, economics director at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The headline S&P Global manufacturing PMI for Asean increased for the first time in six months in November, backed by a solid rise in production in Southeast Asia, the data showed.

New orders rose in China too, climbing at the quickest pace since February 2023 amid renewed export growth, while business confidence hit an eight-month high, according to the Caixin PMI compiled by S&P Global.

However, export order strength could be down to frontloading of shipments as manufacturers try to get ahead of tariffs, economists say. Trump vowed tariffs of up to 60% on Chinese goods during his campaign and has announced additional tariffs of 10% in the wake of his election win.

“We expect China’s new export orders to strengthen further in the next few months, as U.S. importers engage in stockpiling. This will spill over and boost activity among Asian manufacturers plugged into Chinese supply chains,” said Erica Tay, an economist at Maybank.

If pre-emptive stockpiling is behind the regional upturn that means current strength is borrowing from future demand, which will weigh on output in the second half of next year, Tay said.

Another source of uncertainty centers on which other Asian economies may be in the firing line.

“Trump’s protectionist rhetoric won’t be limited to China,” said analysts at BMI, a Fitch Solutions company.

They see tariff threats as a negotiating tactic that will be used on others too. Among the top candidates are Vietnam, Japan and South Korea—all major contributors to the U.S. trade deficit, a parameter BMI reckons plays a part in designating tariffs targets. (…)

Trump Weaponizing Dollar Seen as a Needless BRICS Provocation

(…) Trump on the weekend warned the so-called BRICS countries he would require a commitment that they wouldn’t create a new currency as an alternative to using the greenback, and repeated threats to levy a 100% tariff if they did. The comments, made Saturday in a post to his Truth Social network, echo those he used in his election campaign.

“The dollar remains dominant for several reasons: the USD is the most liquid currency in the world, trades freely, it is also the lending currency of the world,” said Rodrigo Catril, a strategist at National Australia Bank Ltd. in Sydney. “If Trump increases the pressure on BRICS, it may well accelerate a move away from the dollar.” (…)

The dollar accounted for about 88% of all trades in the $7.5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, based on the latest triennial survey from the Bank for International Settlements published in 2022. BRICS members control more than 40% of central-bank reserves globally and have discussed ways to reduce reliance on the greenback — including the idea of a single currency for use between them. (…)

Any attempt to dethrone the greenback is easier said than done. The size and strength of the US economy is unparalleled, Treasuries are still one of the safest ways to store money, and the greenback is still the ultimate beneficiary of haven flows.

“With regards to this specific threat, it doesn’t appear realistic and the probability is low, but serves as a good reminder that President-elect Trump wants to keep the US dollar as a reserve currency and is unlikely to proactively devalue the dollar,” said Cindy Lau, head of fixed income at Avanda Investment Management Pte. in Singapore.

“This also reaffirms our thinking that tariffs will be continually used as a threat in his term, to serve his objectives and as a powerful bargaining tool,” she said.

While there’s no immediate threat to the dollar’s supremacy, the long-term outlook is less certain.

Brazil and China had previously struck deals to settle trade in their local currencies, while India and Malaysia had inked an accord to increase usage of the rupee in cross-border business. Thailand and China’s central banks in May signed a memorandum of understanding to promote bilateral transactions in local currencies, and Trump’s latest comments may actually increase the likelihood of further such agreements.

“From today, anyone outside the US who uses the dollar for transactions will sense this as a yoke that the US is imposing on them,” said Ulrich Leuchtmann, head of foreign-exchange research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “In the long term, this cannot be a stable state of affairs. Especially since this yoke is likely to be felt all the more oppressively the more selfishly US policy acts in other areas.”

Half-point interest-rate cut back in play after meagre third-quarter Canadian GDP growth

Canadian gross domestic product grew at an annualized pace of 1 per cent in July through September, down from 2.2 per cent in the second quarter, Statistics Canada reported Friday. This was broadly in line with Bay Street estimates but below the central bank’s downwardly-revised forecast of 1.5 per cent annualized growth. On a per-capita basis, GDP contracted for the sixth consecutive quarter.

An advanced estimate for October, which showed 0.1 per cent GDP growth that month, suggests economic activity will fall short of the central bank’s forecast in the fourth quarter as well. (…)

Interest-rate swap markets, which capture investor expectations about monetary policy, now see a roughly 45-per-cent chance the central bank will lower its policy rate by half a percentage point. That’s up from 30 per cent before the GDP numbers were released, according to LSEG data. (…)

Consumer spending grew at a healthy annualized clip of 3.5 per cent in the third quarter, and residential investment grew modestly for the first time in a year. That suggests interest-rate-sensitive parts of the economy are starting to respond to the monetary policy easing cycle that began in June.

Relatively strong consumer demand, however, was offset by softer-than-expected imports and exports as well as a significant drop in business investment, with spending on non-residential structures, machinery and equipment falling 11.3 per cent in the quarter. (…)

Friday’s data contained a significant upward revision to earlier GDP numbers. Statscan raised its estimates of economic activity in 2021, 2022 and 2023, as well as the first half of 2024. Combined, these revisions left Canada’s overall GDP level about 1.5 per cent higher than previously thought.

This suggests the Canadian economy entered the current period of weakness on a stronger footing than previously thought, and that the output gap – the difference between what an economy can produce and what it is producing – may be smaller than central bankers believed. (…)

The November labour force survey numbers, out next Friday, are the last key piece of information before the December rate decision.

Weird stats:

• Real government spending increased by 4.6% after +3.8% and contributed +1.0pp to annualized real GDP growth. The release noted that the rise in government expenditure reflected an increase in spending across all levels of government.
• Real business investment declined by 3.6% after +3.3% in Q2 and subtracted 0.7pp from annualized real GDP growth.
• On a per-capita annualized basis, real consumption expenditure increased by 1.0% after having declined by 1.5% in Q2.
• Compensation of employees grew at a +8.2% annualized pace in Q3 (vs. +7.4% in Q2).
• On net, household net disposable income increased by 9.4% in Q3 (after an upwardly revised +10.3% in Q2). In real terms, real household net disposable income increased by 7.7% (after +6.0%). The household saving rate increased to 7.1% from a downwardly revised 6.2% in Q2 (it averaged 2.2% in 2019).

EARNINGS WATCH

From LSEG/IBES:

482 companies in the S&P 500 Index have reported earnings for Q3 2024. Of these companies, 76.3% reported earnings above analyst expectations and 18.9% reported earnings below analyst expectations. In a typical quarter (since 1994), 67% of companies beat estimates and 20% miss estimates. Over the past four quarters, 79% of companies beat the estimates and 16% missed estimates.

In aggregate, companies are reporting earnings that are 7.6% above estimates, which compares to a long-term (since 1994) average surprise factor of 4.2% and the average surprise factor over the prior four quarters of 6.5%.

Of these companies, 60.6% reported revenue above analyst expectations and 39.4% reported revenue below analyst expectations. In a typical quarter (since 2002), 62% of companies beat estimates and 38% miss estimates. Over the past four quarters, 62% of companies beat the estimates and 39% missed estimates.

In aggregate, companies are reporting revenues that are 1.5% above estimates, which compares to a long-term (since 2002) average surprise factor of 1.3% and the average surprise factor over the prior four quarters of 1.1%.

The estimated earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 for 24Q3 is 9.0%. If the energy sector is excluded, the growth rate improves to 11.7%.

The estimated revenue growth rate for the S&P 500 for 24Q3 is 5.3%. If the energy sector is excluded, the growth rate improves to 6.4%.

The estimated earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 for 24Q4 is 9.8%. If the energy sector is excluded, the growth rate improves to 12.5%.

Seven companies offered guidance last week, 5 negative, one positive.

Nonetheless:

BLACK FRIDAY SALE!

You asked for it!

Every service I subscribe to for this blog is currently offering Thanksgiving discounts.

I shall do the same. After 16 years, here’s the second Edge and Odds Thanksgiving sale. Take advantage of it, it may never come back!

Here it is:

Any new or existing subscriber, any new reader or non-reader, even anybody with zero interest in the blog, will get 50% off the regular price which, remarkably, has not changed in 16 years!

This offer will remain valid until next Thanksgiving and will be retroactive to January 3rd, 2009, the original launch date, even for those who found me later, or even never found me.

And for my numerous non-American readers, for fairness sake, they will be allowed to apply the very same discount, no discrimination, during any other holiday period of their choice, valid until any other holiday period of their choice, and retroactive as far back as they wish.

To take advantage of this offer, simply do nothing. The discount will be automatically applied to your account, even if you don’t have one.

Please allow a reasonable number of days, weeks or months. We have been short-staffed here since day one.

The problem is that I only hire on a profit-sharing scheme and that has yet to appeal to anybody since I still refuse to “embellish” the blog with ads and pop-ups.

*****

My real Thanksgiving!

Sincere thanks are hereby given to all of you who have helped the blog with donations, large or small, occasional or regular.

I truly appreciate your marks of appreciation and altruistic generosity given that you are a minority helping all Edge and Odds readers.

Getting older, slower and sloppier, busy with 5 children and 11 grand-children, some in other biz with me (or rather me with them), and being short-staffed for reasons given or not above, I often cannot find the time/energy to send a thank you note. I apologize and I will try to improve on that even though I know I should not commit to that.

Rightly or wrongly, I always decide to work on the blog rather than use time to send thank you notes.

But here they are: Robert, Todd, Joseph, Curt, Bill, Pat, Marc, Daniel, Jeff, David, John, Richard, Brian, Larry, Rick, Patrick, Joseph, Denis, John, Massimo, Jack, “nseix”, Nick, Rajiv, Constantin, Eric, Steven, just to name some of the recent donators, I hereby sincerely thank you all and salute your generosity.

To all others, free riders, thank you for reading me, a very nice compliment in itself.

Denis

Fed’s Preferred Inflation Measure Remained Elevated in October

The core version of the Fed’s preferred 12-month inflation gauge ticked back up to 2.8% as expected last month—a sign that even though prices have decelerated, they are still rising stubbornly.

Prices as measured by the personal-consumption expenditures price index rose 0.2% in October, or 0.3% after excluding the food and energy categories. Looking back 12 months, the PCE price index is up 2.3%, or 2.8% on a core basis. (…)

Decimals can make a big difference: the PCE price index actually rose 0.24% MoM after +0.18%. Annualized, that’s +2.9% vs +2.2%.

Core PCE was unchanged at +0.27% after +0.26%.Still +3.3% annualized.

Goods are stiff deflating, –0.1% for the 3rd consecutive month.

But services are still problematic at +0.38% (+4.6% a.r.) after +0.31% (+3.7%).

Mr. Powell’s Supercore PCE (services ex-energy and housing) accelerated to +0.4% MoM (0.36%) after a +0.3% reading in September, the highest in seven months, and up 3.5% YoY after +3.2%. Where is that productivity?

The other “problem” is that Americans’ income is rising strongly in nominal dollars:

• Personal income: +0.6% for October after +0.3% In September and +0.26% on average in the previous 5 months.
• Employee compensation is still rising 0.45% per month, +5.5% annualized.
• Disposable income jumped 0.7% after +0.3%. That’s 6.1% annualized in the past 2 months.

Expenditures are keeping pace at +0.5% monthly on average since May (+0.4% in October after +0.6%).

Real expenditures rose only 0.1% in October but the 3.6% average annual pace since May is intact.

BTW, a November preview:

@neilksethi

Buy Now Before Tariffs Hit, Retailers Are Telling Shoppers

“Pre-Tariff Sale! This is not a drill,” declares a Facebook post from Finally Home Furnishings, urging customers to order now before prices “double.”

The online furniture retailer is one of many businesses urging customers to buy now before President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs potentially raise costs—and prices. Others banging the tariff drum include companies selling outdoor gear, stickers, beauty products and more. (…)

The outdoor and sporting-goods retailer Tarptent leveraged the looming threat of tariffs to boost its continuing sales promotion in mid-November. A recent Facebook post promoting its Black Friday sale, which offered up to 35% off some tents, said: “These are the best discounts we will likely offer until this time next year, and with potential tariffs looming, they might be the best prices for a lot longer than that.” (…)

Some influencers on TikTok are feeding into the tariff frenzy, urging people to buy their favorite products in bulk now. Others on the platform are doling out tips on how long everyday items such as makeup, shampoos and food can be stored, helping users strategize their stockpiling plans.

Finally Home Furnishings, the furniture seller, delivered this warning on Facebook earlier this month: “The very same items you are seeing now will be double the price once the tariffs kick in.” The message prompted several customers to place orders sooner rather than later, said the owner, Sydney Arnold. The retailer plans to expand its efforts with email and traditional mailings to spread the word.

“There is a misconception that the countries exporting goods will bear the cost of the tariffs, but that is simply not true,” Arnold said. Rather, she added, price increases will be passed on to consumers. (…)

AutoZone Chief Executive Philip Daniele has told analysts that the auto-parts retailer “will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer” if they come to fruition. Tariffs “certainly would add product costs,” Lowe’s Chief Financial Officer Brandon Sink said on the company’s recent earnings call. (…)

Goods deflation gone for good?

Trump’s tariff plans will likely boost US imports in the near-term. Anecdotes suggest that companies are already frontloading imports, statistical estimates from the last trade war suggest that each 1pp increase in tariff rates raised US imports by 1.7% in the months prior to implementation (implying a 5-6% boost under our baseline tariff assumptions), and port traffic in China has increased since the US election. Such stockpiling should have a negligible effect on GDP, however, since the import boost should be offset by inventory increases.

Second, elevated trade policy uncertainty will likely start to weigh on investment in early 2025. Statistical estimates suggest that investment-sensitive manufacturing activity responds to higher trade policy uncertainty within two quarters, while corporate capex generally pulled back one quarter following an increase in earnings call mentions of trade policy uncertainty. Combining these timing estimates with the rise in trade policy uncertainty thus far implies a sizable drag on Euro area growth in 2025H1 but only a modest drag in the US, consistent with our country teams’ forecasts. (GS)

China’s Local Governments Hold Back Wages in Desperate Scrape for Cash Beijing’s recent attempt to address the trillions in hidden debt held by local governments only scratches the surface

(…) The cash crunch threatens China’s economic growth, since local governments carry out much of China’s investments and indirectly impact household finances as employers of civil servants and contractors of private businesses. The stakes for China’s stagnating economy are even higher with President-elect Donald Trump promising to slap China with punitive tariffs on its exports to the U.S. 

About 1,200 worker protests over unpaid wages or other compensation-related grievances have occurred nationwide so far this year, following more than 1,600 such incidents last year, according to videos and posts on social media that are tracked by Hong Kong-based nonprofit China Labour Bulletin. That is up from about 700 in 2022 and around 900 in 2021.

For years, local governments used complex state-owned funding vehicles that borrowed on their behalf, often to finance projects with little economic benefit. Across China, there are railroads with too few commuters, industrial parks with no tenants and even a ski resort in an area with little snow. Meanwhile, the trillions of yuan in revenue that local governments collect from selling land has shrunk sharply since the collapse of China’s epic property boom.

Beijing has said local governments’ “hidden debt that needs digesting”—without elaborating on how they define that—stood at the equivalent of $2 trillion at the end of last year, but economists have put the total hidden debt at between $7 trillion and $11 trillion. As much as $800 billion of that debt is at a high risk of default, economists estimate.

Monthly debt repayment across provinces reached 125% of monthly revenue at some points last year, according to an analysis by Victor Shih, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who researches China’s politics and financial system.

China this month attempted to address the problem with a $1.4 trillion package to swap local governments’ off-balance-sheet debt with new bonds aimed at easing their financial burden. The debt swaps push maturity dates into the future, but don’t pay down the money owed. (…)

“Local governments have a lot of fiscal burden, but not a lot of fiscal income,” said Zhiguo He, a financial economist at Stanford University’s business school. (…)

The recently announced debt-swap program may help local governments save money on interest payments, which could help them pay back owed wages and reduce unnecessary fines, according to economists. That could boost some households’ income and potentially stimulate much-needed consumer spending, though the direct effects are hard to measure.

Macquarie estimates the plan could save 600 billion yuan in interest payments over the next five years, or less than 0.1% of gross-domestic product each year. Economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that the debt-swap program could boost China’s real GDP by 0.55 percentage points. 

The fact that the package covers a fraction of estimated hidden debt suggests that Beijing isn’t letting local governments and the funding vehicles they use completely off the hook. Authorities are likely concerned with moral hazard, the idea that rescuing an entity could lead to even more risk-taking. (…)

Goldman Sachs research finds that China’s house prices have yet to bottom out, a prerequisite to a sustainable turnaround in consumption.

China’s EV Boom Threatens to Push Gasoline Demand Off a Cliff Sales of new energy vehicles have reached a tipping point

(…) Now, according to official statistics, China’s sales of electric vehicles and hybrids have in fact reached a tipping point. They’ve accounted for more than half of retail passenger vehicle sales in the four months from July, according to the China Passenger Car Association, a trend that’s poised to send appetite for transport fuels into a decline that will have a major impact on the oil market.

The more rapid-than-expected uptake of EVs has shifted views among oil forecasters at energy majors, banks and academics in recent months. Unlike in the US and Europe – where peaks in consumption were followed by long plateaus — the drop in demand in the world’s top crude importer is expected to be more pronounced. Brokerage CITIC Futures Co. sees Chinese gasoline consumption dropping by 4% to 5% a year through 2030. (…)

“What we’re seeing now is the medium-term expectations coming ahead of schedule, and that has implications for the shape of Chinese and global demand growth through the rest of the decade.” (…)

[China] accounts for almost a fifth of worldwide oil demand, and gasoline makes up about a quarter of that. The prospect of a sharp drop from transport is also coming on top of tepid industrial consumption due to slowing economic growth.

The growing popularity of electric trucks, as well as those that run on liquefied natural gas, is also weighing on demand for diesel. Chinese consumption of the fuel peaked in 2019 and will drop by 3% to 5% a year through 2030, UBS Securities Co. said in a note this month. (…)

The IEA sees “rampant, mass-market electrification” potentially pushing Chinese gasoline demand into decline from 2025. That will result in an average annual drop of 2.1% from 2023 through 2030. Others, like CITIC, see a more rapid retreat. Improvements in fuel efficiency and a peak in car ownership would help drive the declines, along with the uptake of EVs, the brokerage said in a note in late October.

This year may be a “turning point for China’s refined oil market, with gasoline consumption peaking before declining rapidly,” Luo Yantuo, a senior engineer with the PetroChina Planning & Engineering Institute, part of China’s biggest oil company, wrote this month in an analysis piece on PetroChina’s website. The amount of gasoline-powered cars on the road would peak as early as next year, she said. (…)

New energy vehicles make up about 10% of all cars on the road now, and that’s expected to exceed 20% by 2027 and could approach 100% by the 2040s, said Anders Hove, a China researcher at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. The country’s oil demand from light vehicles will fall from around 3.5 million barrels a day at the moment to 1 million by 2040, he said. (…)

In the US, EV’s still represent only about 10% of total car sales, and BloombergNEF sharply scaled back its forecasts for growth after the Republican election sweep. (…)

Gasoline consumption there has fallen just 12% from a peak in 2004 through last year, according to IEA data. In Europe, where cars running on gasoline and diesel are common, transport sector consumption is down only 6% from a high in 2007. (…)

This is liberating discretionary income, fueling U.S. overall consumption:

Gas prices at the pump continue to decline, which is another tailwind to consumer spending, see chart below. The decline in oil prices is driven by significant supply and production in the US and lower growth in China.

Source: AMA, Bloomberg, Apollo Chief Economist