How's Business In The US & Europe?

We predict that global economic growth will improve this year. Until recently that was a contrary view since it was widely expected that the US, Europe, and China would fall into recessions this year. Now there is growing optimism about the outlook for Europe and China. The consensus outlook for the US remains relatively pessimistic.

January's flash purchasing managers indexes (PMIs) for the US and Europe moved higher but remain on downward trends. In the US both the M-PMI and NM-PMI ticked up this month, but remained below 50.0 at 48.4 and 46.6, respectively (chart).