Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of expanding factories around the world.
Late yesterday the flash PMI for China, the HSBC-Markit one, came in with a better than expected result. It indicated that Chinese factories were expanding again with orders and output driving the change. Interestingly, export orders did not grow however. Japanese factories expanded too.
And last night, the same survey for the EU was released and that showed Eurozone growth has slowed to six-month low despite a strengthening 'periphery'. Germany is still expanding strongly, while France isn't expanding at all, in fact it is contracting faster. The 'France' problem will be worrying the ECB. The EU is worried too and some at the top now see 'less is more'.
In complete contrast, the US manufacturing PMI which was released earlier this morning points to its strongest improvement in overall business conditions since May 2010. Just about every indicator is expanding faster and at a pretty high rate.
American real estate markets are perking up as well. Existing-home sales rose strongly in May to their highest level in seven months and inventory gains continued to help moderate price growth, according to the National Association of Realtors. All four regions of the country experienced sales gains compared to a month earlier.
In commodity markets, the price of oil slumped as Iraq’s army recaptured territory from militants. Maybe another more important reason is China imported 60% less less fuel oil last month to its lowest level in at least 11 years, according to data from Chinese Customs in Beijing. The EU PMI won't have helped the oil price either. However, 'slumped' might be a bit strong because the price is still at about US$106/US$114 US/Brent, but both of those were down sharply and somewhat unexpectedly given the Iraqi and Ukrainian tensions.
The gold price is unchanged today. UST 10 yr benchmark yields are down slightly again today ay 2.60%.
Overnight reports out of Australia say that the recently touted float of Hirepool has collapsed through lack of investor demand at the price they sought.
And staying in Australia, we reported last week about the financing fraud around metals inventories in China's port warehouses. Well, it seems that is echoing in Australia with mines closing and prices falling even for iron ore.
We start today with the NZ dollar still very high and there was little change overnight. We are at 87.1 USc, 92.5 AUc and the TWI is at 81.0.
If you want to catch up with all the changes yesterday we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
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