Good morning contrarians!
Stock futures are pointing to a lower open. The Nasdaq is down about 0.4% with S&P 500 and Dow Industrials pointing to a 0.3% decline at the open. Bonds are selling off though, with the yield on the 10-year up to 1.62%. Those numbers as of 0645.
Couple of disappointing data points out of China during the overnight have hurt sentiment. The GDP report came in at 4.9%, short of economist estimates for 5.3%. We all know that this official GDP figure is largely made up, so the fact that Chinese authorities are admitting to that big of a miss is a major statement.
More telling is Chinese industrial production, which grew just 3.1% year-over-year last month versus 4.5% anticipated (and 5.3% the previous month). China is still very much the factory of the world so this makes a statement. Here too the data is from the National Bureau of Statistics, the government office, so what is being admitted to likely masks a worse figure in reality. So maybe this is kind of the flip side of last week’s assurance that everything was contained?
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Contrarian Investor Premium to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
