Amid the global growth party of hope-strewn PMIs across the world (all of which have been shown time and time again to hold zero correlation to actual economic data), China’s non-manufacturing data just puked in the punchbowl, crashing to its weakest level since May 2016 (despite amodest uptick in manufacturing).

Is China’s lagged credit impulse finally starting to leak into reality?

Manufacturing PMI rose from 51.4 to 51.7 in August but employment fell, new export orders fell, and both input and output prices soared. Notably large enterprises actually downticked with medium-size entities the most hopeful.

On the services side, non-manufacturing PMI tumbled to 53.4 (still expansionary, we hear bulls cry) – the weakest since May 2016 as new orders, business expectations, and inventories weakened.