No 892 - Objective metrics

　　原创

　　BANDSFinancial

　　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。

　　香港

　　Central banks will be digesting Fed Chairman Powel‘s comments to the Wall Street Journal that the Federal Reserve will not hesitate to keep raising interest rates until inflation falls in a clear and convincing way, even if that involves moving past broadly understood levels of neutral, adding that the US economy is strong and well-positioned to withstand less accommodative and tighter monetary policy. Here, in the Middle Kingdom, of course, that is faint background noise, as investors are waiting for the PBOC to do exactly the opposite for the diametrically opposite reason.Despite Powels warnings, US equities were in risk-on mode prompted by the US retail sales data which lifted 8.2% YoY in April and March was upwardly revised to 7.3%% as US consumers continued to spend although prices are rising. In China by comparison, in data released on Monday, China's retail sales declined by 11.1% YoY in April significantly worse than market expectations of a 6.1% fall, which followed a 3.5% drop in March.This morning the Shanghai authorities announced that covid cases outside of the centralised quarantine facilities are zero for the fourth consecutive day. However, Shanghai residents understand reopening will be a gradual process, and do not expect the city to fully reopen for at least another four to six weeks. And on this, to provide some absolute objectivity, I propose to report on two metrics. Firstly is the resumption of work on the twenty-five story residential building adjacent to this compound, work that stopped over 62 days ago. Long term readers will know that the building has had a chequered history. When I arrived in 2018 it was a two-storey mothballed stump but more recently it has risen to a twenty-five storey concrete skeleton awaiting fit-out, with two idle skyscraper style cranes above it. Occasionally two or three marooned building workers climb to the roof and stand unsteadily in the wind looking at the fine views of Shanghai, they like me, have been stuck in their compound for 62 days. My second metric, some 500 metres beyond the building, are the two ferry boats that cross the Huangpu River. Usually weaving between the barges of Shanghai’s river traffic they connect Puxi and Pudong for pedestrians and bike riders alike. It typically takes only a few minutes to cross, but when they reopen I think I will take a river cruise, and travel forward and back four or five times for no other reason than I can.However, without such objective benchmarks, the media focus may now turn to Beijing and particularly the smaller cities and towns which have fewer resources at hand than Shanghai or Beijing. Here the local managers will go early and go hard with the implementation of containment policies. That said, total new infections across China were 1227 yesterday, stunningly low against international norms.

　　Have a good dayRegards John