The usual avalanche of Asian data arrives with the end of the month. Surprisingly, despite generating seven surprises and five shocks, there was little compelling to explore.
China's CFLP PMIs for August were, frankly, a non-event, with manufacturing almost unchanged, and non-manufacturing up slightly. The details are, frankly, dull.
India's 2Q GDP dropped 22.8% yoy: utterly disastrous but also dictated above all by the mandated pandemic lockdown.
Japan and S Korea reported industrial results for July, with Japan having the slightly better month (output up 8% mom and inventory/shipment down 8.9% mom), vs S Korea's manufacturing output +1.8% mom and inventory/turnover down 1.4% mom). But Japan is starting a long way back, with output down 16.1% yoy vs S Korea down 2.4% yoy. And both have a long way to go to deal with their still-worrying inventory disequilibria.
