The last day of the week brings along a huge flood of economic reports, especially lots of PMI data from several countries.
First off, Australia released its manufacturing and services flash PMIs for October, which at 57.3 and 52, respectively, were better than the previous month’s data.
Germany’s own PMI data was a bit of a mixed batch. Manufacturing climbed to 58.2, higher than expected, but the services PMI disappointed investors at just 52.4, dragging the composite index to 52, also below forecast.
The same trend was seen in the eurozone as a whole: the manufacturing PMI was better than anticipated at 58.5, but the composite index disappointed at 54.3, narrowly missing the forecast.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom shone in all three flash PMIs, as each of the reports was better than expected.
We are expecting the manufacturing PMI from the United States later in the day.
Other notable releases today came from Japan, which published its September inflation data. The reports aligned perfectly with the forecasts.
There was also more data out of the UK - a disappointing consumer confidence index for October and even more disappointing retail sales data for September.
In other news, today China surprised the financial world as the infamous Evergrande Group managed to make good on a payment to some of its creditors, whose grace period was about to expire. This prevented the company with troubled finances from being officially default, a somewhat unexpected development, especially considering Evergrande failed to sell one of its subsidiaries this week, which bode ill of its ability to pay anything.
Also on a positive note, parts of Australia are exiting some of the longest lockdowns we’ve seen since the start of the pandemic.
US stock indices today will trade mixed, largely because of an upset in the tech sector. Snap reported a pretty dismal quarter due to a slump in advertising revenue, and many expected that Facebook and Twitter will fare similarly, if a little bit better.
Still in the United States, the battle over tax reform continues. The Democratic Party wanted to bump up the corporate income tax to 28% in order to raise money to pay for its ambitious spending bills, but there appears to be a lot of internal resistance from the less progressive wing of the party. Thus, the tax reform planned by the Dems might not happen after all.
