The last quarter limped to a relatively quiet finish overnight with Wall Street easing yet again as the COVID-19 pandemic shows no signs of slowing in the United States and Europe. Today’s PMI dump across Asia showed a mixed bag with , , Thailand and ’s manufacturing PMI’s all printing just below 50.
Still, in a relative sense, it was not all doom and gloom with Asia still holding its head above water, just. China provided the highlight, with the crawling back into expansionary territory, printing 50.1. The Caixin data encompasses a much broader range of small and medium enterprises than the official data, and the fact that it remains above 50 is some reason for cheer that China remains on track to lead the world out of the pandemic slump.
That is not to say that the world is out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. Most, if not all the world’s airline industry, will either have ceased to exist or be in some form of nationalization, before this is all over, for…