Following New Zealand’s biggest monthly plunge in consumer confidence in over 2 years, Japan’s Manufacturing PMI surged to its highest since March at 52.5 (handily beating expectations of 51.5). Almost the entire suite of subindices were positive except JPY weakness-inspired margin compression as output prices tumbled and input prices surged. All of this in the face of collapsing and disappointing hard data. Meanwhile, China Manufacturing PMI plunged to 51.5, missing by the most on record, as China’s apparent ‘hard’ data shows improvement.