No 656 - Unsynchronised recovery

　　磐石金融有限公司（ BANDS Financial Limited ）在香港注册成立，是一家持有香港证监会（SFC）2号牌照的期货经纪公司，业务涉及中国以外全球大部分活跃期货及期权市场。

　　After last week‘s surfeit of Chinese data, there is nothing meaningful in the diary until the end of the month, so we say hello to our old friends’ rumour and conjecture to provide content for this letter for the next few weeks.On that basis, following last weeks numbers, it is reasonably expected that all levels of Beijing policy-making will now be in session culminating with are view of economic policy by the Politburo. This will take place against a background of vastly different regional economic expectations for the G20 group of countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK, the US and the EU.) the individual expectations of which now seem expressly linked to each countries success in managing their exit from COVID, particularly the decline of infection rates due to roll out of vaccination programs. The headline number for China 1Q21 YoY GDP growth published on Friday was an eye-catching 18.3%, however, the 1Q21 QoQ came in at 0.6% (expected 1.5%) strongly suggesting that the Chinese economy has already begun to decelerate from its 4Q20 QoQ rise at 2.6%. Indeed, HSBC estimates that stripping out the distortion of low base effects China‘s YoY GDP growth for 1Q2021 was about 5.4%, which is lower than the pre-coronavirus trend of roughly 6% growth. HSBC expects China to continue “running below full speed” in the coming months.So, we can say, in terms of GDP growth, there is a growing consensus that China has now peaked, whereas the US is moving upward, and Europe, Japan and many of the most populous G20 countries have not yet achieved lift-off. Given that China accounted for 17% of world GDP, 29% of its growth and 55% of world copper consumption last year, China’s decelerating growth has strong implications for those countries that are still somewhat behind it in terms of recovery, an issue we shall return to in the coming days. Have a good day

　　Joh