The first week of the month is always key. Jam-packed with crucial tier one forward looking data, the direction can be extremely important. China has kicked off proceedings with a hat-trick of arguably supportive releases. Firstly a 25 basis point rate cut by the People’s Bank of China to 5.35%. Furthermore, over the weekend we had official China Manufacturing still slightly in contraction at 49.9 (this will help to stoke the fires of further rate cuts by the PBOC) but beating expectations, whilst the HSBC manufacturing PMI was also better than expectations. Asian markets were mildly higher overnight and perhaps it ... (full story)