Europe and China: A Tale of Two Manufacturing Economies
Per recent manufacturing indicators, Europe's economy may surprise on the upside in 2016, while China is likely to continue stumbling along, says Morningstar's Bob Johnson.
Per recent manufacturing indicators, Europe's economy may surprise on the upside in 2016, while China is likely to continue stumbling along, says Morningstar's Bob Johnson.
Bob Johnson: This week's chart represents two very divergent manufacturing economies. It shows that China is doing worse and Europe is doing better. This particular chart focuses on a purchasing manager index. What it does is it asks purchasing managers a very simple set of questions: Are things better or worse than they were the month before?
Loosely, the numbers are the percentage of managers who are more bullish than they were the month before. The European reading shows an index reading greater than 50, at 53 or so. That's an excellent reading, and you can tell from the slope of the line that their optimism is growing. On the other hand, China continues to erode. Their reading was just 48.2, suggesting more managers were bearish than bullish. And that trend continues to get worse.
The divergence probably stems from the quantitative-easing program in Europe and, on the converse, China's emphasis more on the consumer than on investment and exports.
Unfortunately, China is more dependent on manufacturing--about 30% to 35% of GDP--while that number is a lower 20% to 25% in Europe. Clearly, that's why the markets reacted so negatively this week when the data was released.
Going forward, the data suggests that Europe might provide an upside surprise in 2016, while China may continue to stumble along.
Transparency is how we protect the integrity of our work and keep empowering investors to achieve their goals and dreams. And we have unwavering standards for how we keep that integrity intact, from our research and data to our policies on content and your personal data.
We’d like to share more about how we work and what drives our day-to-day business.
We sell different types of products and services to both investment professionals
and individual investors. These products and services are usually sold through
license agreements or subscriptions. Our investment management business generates
asset-based fees, which are calculated as a percentage of assets under management.
We also sell both admissions and sponsorship packages for our investment conferences
and advertising on our websites and newsletters.
How we use your information depends on the product and service that you use and your relationship with us. We may use it to:
To learn more about how we handle and protect your data, visit our privacy center.
Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investor’s point of view. We also respect individual opinions––they represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.
To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.
Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.