A Look at Emerging Market December PMI Reports

Key emerging market indicators released last week are as follows:

• Mexico’s (EWW) manufacturing PMI (purchasing managers’ index)
• Indonesia’s (IDX) (ASEA) manufacturing PMI
• Russia’s (RSX) manufacturing PMI
• Russia’s services PMI
• China’s 4Q17 GDP

The emerging markets showed strong improvements in 2017. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), which tracks the performance of emerging markets, rose 37.3% in 2017. Between January 2 and January 24, 2018, the ETF rose 9%.

In this series, we’ll analyze the manufacturing and services activity of Russia in December 2017, China’s economic growth rate in 4Q17, and manufacturing PMI for Mexico and Indonesia in December 2017. China is an important trading partner for major developed economies (EFA) and emerging economies, so it’s important for investors to track its economic growth.

In the next part of this series, we’ll analyze Mexico’s manufacturing PMI in December 2017.