Daniel Moser

Something Is Happening in China: How Investors Can Profit

The Chinese can afford to pay for their second stimulus plan because they have been running tremendous current account surpluses. Yes, I think you make a valid point that they will indeed have less desire to buy U.S. treasuries as they fund their own economy. Moreover, as they build out their own internal consumption, they won't have as much desire to hold U.S. Treasuries in an effort to keep their currency low to maintain their export driven economy.

In addition, I do not believe that showing percent changes m/m obscures the very point I was trying to make. I am fairly confident that I am most interested in percent changes so that one might observe any correlation between my "suspect" basket of stocks and the PMI data. Especially considering that PMI data is somewhat unusual in that absolute levels have a different sort of interpretation than typical data series (i.e. >50 is economic expansion and <50 is contraction). So, i am pretty sure overlaying the raw number would have been pointless.

I am going to take a look at the freight companies to see if there might be some insights gained from those. However, I am don't know much at all about freight companies so I am definitely open to suggestions for freight companies that are less likely to have accounting scandals than others.

With respect to those who appear to get frustrated at anyone who would dare take a glance at Chinese data, I am well aware that the precision of the numbers are highly questionable. Although I must ask, if the Chinese numbers are not to be trusted, why do they show anything bad at all? Which is to say, why would the big bad communists ever show PMI data less than 50? Or declining GDP growth? Furthermore, a grain of salt is always needed when looking at any economic or accounting data.

This is just a tiny trickle of information for those interested in forward looking investment ideas. If you don't like them, don't use them. If you do like them, find them interesting, and wish to build upon them with your own constructive ideas, awesome and I wish you luck.