Manufacturing PMI's are mixed heading into the U.S. session
NEW YORK (Mar 24) Manufacturing numbers across the world have been pretty robust this morning and overnight. With the exception of the U.K., France, and Japan, all of the other major nations have beaten expectations or previous figures. In Europe, the ECB is likely to have more of a headache as business and manufacturing accelerated. There is however the Russia/Ukraine conflict and Chinese COVID outbreak hanging over any potential economic growth surge.
Reuters noted that activity in Germany, Europe's largest economy, dipped this month as output price inflation hit a new record high and the war in Ukraine impacted demand as well as supply chains, earlier data showed. Christoph Weil at Commerzbank said "Price pressure remains very high. Accordingly, consumers will have to expect prices to continue to rise in the coming months. This increases the pressure on the ECB to initiate a turnaround in monetary policy,".
Joe Hayes, senior economist at IHS Markit said “Don’t let the drop in the headline PMI distract from what should be viewed as a largely positive month for the euro area manufacturing sector in February,”
In the U.K. the reading fell to its lowest point since Feb 2021. Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global noted "the UK PMI surveys indicated a sustained robust pace of expansion in March as the further reopening of the economy from COVID-19 containment measures helped offset headwinds from the Ukraine war, Brexit, and rising prices,". So some analysts are not sounding the alarm bells about this reading. Business expectations are now at their lowest for almost one and a half years. This could be because of soaring raw materials prices and the aforementioned war in Ukraine.
Later in the session, the market will get the latest figures from America. Manufacturing PMI (Mar) is expected to print at 56.3 lower than the last reading of 57.3.
German Manufacturing PMI (Mar) 57.6 vs exp 55.8 prev 58.4
EU Manufacturing PMI (Mar) 57.0 vs exp 56.0 prev 58.2
UK Manufacturing PMI 55.5 vs exp 57.0 prev 58.0
French Manufacturing PMI (Mar) 54.8 vs exp 55.0 prev 57.2
Japanese Manufacturing PMI (Mar) 53.2 vs exp 53.5 prev 52.7
Australian Manufacturing PMI 57.3 vs prev 57.0
KITCO
