China

We’ve just added a new HFI indicator for China: the YiCai Economic Activity Index, which is available on a daily frequency. This index has been developed using a broad range of sub-indices, including traffic congestion, air pollution, commercial housing sales index, as well as unemployment and bankruptcy indices based on internet searches.

More information on the methodology and background can be consulted here.  

To highlight the correlation of the index with the real economic activity, we compared in the chart below the YiCai index with electricity consumption.

Malaysia

For Malaysia, we've expanded our ESG coverage with the addition of the well-being index from the DOSM (Department of Statistics Malaysia).

In the chart below we displayed the headline index and its 16 components, and looked at the %change between 2019 and 2020, reflecting how the pandemic has impacted the well-being of the Malaysian population. Unsurprisingly, Public Safety and Health are on the top, while the components Culture and Entertainment have decreased significantly.

‍

Addon module: ICE BofA ML Bond Indices

We have been carrying the ICE BofA ML Bond Indices for several years as addon module, but with the new features implemented in Macrobond 1.25 (see release notes here), specific variables of the dataset can be leveraged even more in the platform.

For each ICE index, a ‘Composite Rating’ series is available. Previously a number was assigned to the rating, but with Macrobond 1.25 users can now apply the actual Grading system to the value axis, as the picture below highlights.

In the chart below, we used the ICE Government index for selected Emerging Markets countries, and displayed the High / Low and the 25-75% percentiles as candlesticks, while the current rating is highlighted as a marker.