China Growth Tracker: Has Activity Reached a Peak?

We published a note on how to track Chinese growth in real time using financial and commodity market prices. In these weekly reports, we update the indicators to help us track growth.

Summary

• Our new high-frequency China reopening index has hit a bump in the road as subway use and travel congestion eases in major cities.
• Our market data-based China growth tracker has stalled its recent downward spiral, up eight points over the past two weeks (Chart 2). Our economic-based China growth tracker is flat over the past two weeks with no new updates.

A Bumpy Road to Recovery

While our high-frequency China re-opening index remains above 2022 highs, it has hit a bump in the road as subway use and travel congestion eases in major cities across the country (Chart 1).

Meanwhile, our market data-based China growth tracker has stalled its recent downward spiral, up eight points over the past two week, sitting at -51 points and stopping some distant short of the 2022 low (-83 points). Improving year-on-year iron ore, copper and Baltic Dry Index growth rates drove the positive update.

Our economic-based China growth tracker is flat over the past two weeks with no new updates (Table 2).

Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Editor of Macro Hive. He spent over twenty years doing research at big banks – JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, and Nomura, where he had various “Global Head” roles and did FX, rates and cross-markets research.

Ben Ford is Researcher at Macro Hive. Ben studied BSc Financial Mathematics at Cardiff University and MSc Finance at Cass Business School, his dissertations were on the tails of GARCH volatility models, and foreign exchange investment strategies during crises, respectively.

Photo Credit: depositphotos.com

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