On Saturday last, the Chinese Federation of Logistics and Purchasing in conjunction with the National Bureau of Statistics released the April Purchasing Managers Index which showed an increase to 55.7 from 55.1 the previous month. Yesterday a different measure, the HSBC PMI showed a fall to 55.4 from 57.0 the previous month.

The market took the HSBC number as another reason to go into risk aversion mode but ignored the NBS data.