China Growth Tracker: Reopening Index Accelerates Through April

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 appears to have accelerated its ascent.
• Our market data-based China growth tracker has proven comparatively hesitant despite our economic data-based China growth tracker improving on its newly positive outlook (Charts 2 and 3).

Positive Economic Developments

Our high-frequency China reopening index has continued to accelerate higher through April, with international flights proving a large driver (Chart 1). General travel indices have proven the second-largest driver (Congestion and Subway).

Market-based measures of China growth are comparatively hesitant, having improved over the past couple of weeks but remaining contractive (Table 1). The Baltic Dry Index saw the greatest improvement while iron ore proved the largest negative contributor in recent history.

Meanwhile, our economic data-based China growth tracker continued to improve through March as imports fell just 1.4% YoY, some distance short of the expected contraction in imports (-6.4%; 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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