Interesting take on the PMI’s via Retuers:
“Perfection is pretty hard to find among national economies worldwide these days. Greece has been teetering on the verge of a particularly ugly economic disaster for years now, and while it hasn’t fallen over, the news is still dire, as the economy shrinks, unemployment soars along with civic unrest. The woes of nations on the periphery of the European Union are taking a toll on nations like Germany and France. Even in the United States — where the release of unemployment data for February showed that the jobless rate has remained steady while new job creation that month was actually better than expected – is on a bumpy road to economic recovery, as the Institute for Supply Management reported early this month that its reading of manufacturing activity dropped to 52.4, signaling that the rate of expansion is slowing.
To put that figure in context, and to look for countries where this measure of economic activity – the manufacturing purchasing managers index – is showing not only an expansion in the economy but also month-over-month gains, we drew on Datastream’s expertise to come up with the matrix below.”
Read the full story at Reuters.
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.