The start of the year has been dominated by fears that China’s economy is slowing, which is bizarre because anybody who keeps an eye on economic news knows it has been the case for a couple of years now, and this is behind the softening of commodity prices and shares in mining concerns. The twin “evil”, perversely, has been a weak oil price which (perhaps) investors see as a bellwether for stifled economic output. These concerns have seen billions of Dollars wiped off global markets as nervous investors sell holdings as they run from the Bears. As the oil price has risen, markets have gone up and the Yen down, only to reverse when oil falls back or further news that the Chinese economy “might” be slowing down emerges.
In the past couple of weeks, the trend has been for oil to edge higher, Brent crude has been trading at $40 rather than flirting with the wrong side of $30, and markets to gradually recover ground lost since January. However, the currency and stock markets remain volatile and it would be a brave soul who bets that the oil price is stable. So it comes as a shock to see that markets have broadly taken the news of weak Chinese exports in their stride, so to speak.
In February, Chinese exports saw their worst performance in seven years, tumbling by 25.4%. Imports also fell back by 13.8%, confirming that China’s economy was indeed slowing. Indeed, the data was the worst seen since the height of the Global Financial Crisis back in May 2009. It has been suggested that the bleak results were in part due to an unusually long Chinese Lunar New Year holiday. Whilst markets did dip on the news, they had resumed an upwards trajectory within 48 hours which could suggest that the “slowing” of the Chinese economy has finally been priced into markets. We will see.
