It wasn’t just US banks that began reporting this week. Keeping with tradition we had US aluminium producer Alcoa kicking off proceedings on Monday, and its results weren’t exactly rosy. It missed an already low-set bar! But did we see a read-across to the UK’s own basic materials sector? Well, not exactly. The UK 100 miners started trading under the shadow of Alcoa’s earnings update, but there was a saving grace on Wednesday in the form of some positive Chinese trade data. This time, traders were able to shrug off Alcoa and say ‘thank god for Chinese macro data!’

It’s not always like that of course – there’ve been more negative readings from China than positive ones over the past 12 months, but the trend of late has been pretty encouraging. Might the UK Index miners’ YTD gains of up to 125% have had something to do with this? Quite possibly. It seems that no macro data moves markets quite like Chinese macro data.

Today we also had the Chinese GDP print – the ‘growth’ number everyone tears their hair out at. That was seen as a disappointment, but the reason the UK Index didn’t crash as a result was because the slowdown was felt mainly in China’s services sector. In fact, Chinese copper imports increased by 36% in March, indicating heightened manufacturing activity. So much for China transitioning from a high growth manufacturing to a low growth services economy then, eh?

So if the data are to be believed (and that’s the big IF), China now sees the bulk of its slowdown in its services sector, while recent manufacturing and export data has pleasantly surprised to the upside to tell us that the world’s #2 economy is again making things. What now for the UK 100 ’s mining sector then? Some of the most depressed stocks with the best recovery potential in the markets reside there, and they’re all readjusting to a new state of affairs in commodities. Is China, the world’s biggest consumer of commodities, now realigning itself too?