Take a good look at those presents Santa supplies tomorrow. Chances are many were made in China or in other emerging markets. After all, manufacturing’s contribution to gross domestic product has been in remorseless decline in the US and Europe for decades. It now accounts for about 12 per cent of value added in the US and 15 per cent in the EU. That compares with about 30 per cent in China and something similar in South Korea.
Investors, though, should – and do – see things rather differently. Many European manufacturing stalwarts have been stellar performers on the stock market recently. Bloomberg’s European manufacturing index has beaten the Stoxx 600 over a one- and two-year period, in the latter case by more than one-third. Since 2012, companies from IMI and Philips in industrial or capital goods to Luxottica on the consumer front have done better still.
This owes something to cyclical trends: the European sector has re-rated in anticipation of a pick-up in global economic growth. But what is surprising is the eclectic mix of outperformers. Normally, shares in companies exposed to early-stage capital spending – makers of trucks or machine tools, say – benefit first when economies start to recover.