Thousands Of Companies Around The World Told Us A Ton About The Global Economy

Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images

Global PMI day is wrapping up.

For the most part it was good news.

Asia appears to be growing. Despite a slightly disappointing reading of the official China PMI, the unofficial HSBC PMI was robust.

Europe continues to be a mess, but most of the manufacturing metrics appear to be improving.

US PMI slipped, but beat expectations and the subindices were quite healthy. US ISM Manufacturing also crushed estimates.

Markets are surging.

................................
EARLIER
The world's biggest economies are releasing their January manufacturing PMI reports. This is our live scorecard.

Just a few hours into the day, there was already a controversy. China's official PMI unexpectedly fell, while its unofficial HSBC PMI jumped to a two-year high.

Economists warn that the data is noisy, especially considering the upcoming New Years' holiday.
...
At the beginning of each month, Markit, HSBC, RBC, JP Morgan and several other major data gathering institutions publish the latest local readings of the manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI) for countries around the world.

Each reading is based on surveys of hundreds of companies. Read more about it at Markit.

These are not the most closely followed data points. However, the power of the insights is unparalleled. Jim O'Neill, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, believes the PMI numbers are among the most reliable economic indicators in the world. BlackRock's Russ Koesterich thinks it's one of the most underrated indicators.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SCORECARD (All Time ET)