Via one of the morning Asia notes ING in this case):
On the trade data out of New Zealand:
- the consensus called both imports and exports exactly right to two decimal places, which looks a bit fishy
I have to admit, I sure did a double take when posting it, data is here; yeah check out the imports and exports numbers.
On the Australian July PMI data (here, the flash for July)
- which showed strong gains for both manufacturing … even more so from services
- PMI indices are directional indicators not measures of absolute activity, but this is still an encouraging progression, even if the Australian economy is still underwater compared with 1 Jan 2020 (which it almost certainly is)
Yes, don't go betting the farm on PMIs, even though the services preliminary hit its highest ever for this series (begun in May 2016)
