Monday, May 19, 2014

Global Growth Is Slow But Improving a Bit (excerpt)

Currently, global is showing relatively slow but improving growth, with global industrial production up 3.9% y/y during February. That’s up from a recent low of 1.1% during February 2013.

Output growth has slowed to around 4.5% among the emerging economies over the past year. However, industrial production growth among the advanced economies has rebounded smartly from a recent low of -1.2% during January 2013 to 3.3% in February.

Interestingly, industrial production indexes have been stalled at their record highs for the past two to three years in Brazil, India, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan. Still ascending to new highs are Indonesia, Malaysia, Poland, and Singapore.

China’s output, of course, continues to set record highs. However, the country’s economy seems to have slowed much faster during Q1-2014 than widely recognized. China’s real GDP growth is reported on a y/y basis because the underlying data aren’t seasonally adjusted. Haver Analytics, our data vendor, provides a seasonally adjusted quarterly series. While the y/y growth rate was 7.4% during the first quarter, the q/q growth rate (saar) was only 5.7%, the lowest since Q4-2008.

Today's Morning Briefing: Man on the Train. (1) Hazardous work. (2) Google it. (3) Don’t be evil. (4) Momentum stocks testing their 200-dmas. (5) Not ruling out a broad melt-up. (6) No “Great Rotation” out of bonds. (7) Dividend-yielding stocks are high priced. (8) Internal valuation correction goes global. (9) Last week’s landslide in India and EM stocks. (10) Emerging economies' growth is slow. (11) China’s real GDP growth already under 6%! (12) Eurozone’s recovery harder to see. (13) Confidence down again in Japan. (More for subscribers.)

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