This morning's monthly data from China offered both light and shade, with the hope of stabilisation at a low level following the stimulus measures of recent months perhaps slightly outweighing. On the positive side, property sales appear to have bottomed out in October. While they were still down by more than 10% year-on-year in September, the decline in October was only 1.6%. And the pace of house price declines also slowed from the previous month. In addition, the Chinese consumer seemed to be recovering somewhat. Retail sales rose 4.8% year-on-year, well above expectations ( 3.8%) according to a Bloomberg survey, Commerzbank’s FX analyst Volkmar Baur notes.

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“On the other hand, industrial production and fixed-asset investment were slightly below expectations, but not to the extent of causing concern. Two details were noteworthy however: First, the higher number of property sales has not yet had an impact on housing starts. On the contrary, they fell again slightly more than in the previous month and are now down almost 30% year-on-year. Second, retail sales show a certain anomaly.”