by Jeffrey P. Snider
Alhambra Partners
As with China’s manufacturing, so goes global manufacturing. Rather than rebounding out of 2016’s dismal start, the failure to follow through in April and now May simply proves yet again that nothing has changed. These PMI sentiment surveys are believed to be far more precise than they really are. Even though the ISM Manufacturing PMI, for example, rose slightly to 51.3 in May from 50.8 in April, that isn’t a material difference in the more appropriate wider context. In the interest of brevity, I’ll just copy what I wrote earlier today of China’s PMI’s: