The October consumer confidence index rose to 91.7, far exceeding forecasts; new-home sales edged down in September but beat Goldman Sachs and market expectations.
Goldman Sachs believes the rise in year-on-year industrial profit growth to 14.1% in September was mainly due to base effects. On a seasonally adjusted basis, profits were flat month on month and revenue fell 0.1%. The bank expects both the manufacturing and non-manufacturing PMIs to decline in October.
Goldman Sachs expects high-tech industries to contribute about 2 percentage points a year to China's real GDP growth in 2026–2030, but the same amount of spending generates less employment and labor income than in real estate and services.
Nomura believes industrial profit growth rose markedly in September from August, mainly driven by higher industrial producer prices. Profit margins improved but remained below the second-quarter average.
Fiscal easing and the AI boom have offset some of the impact of tariffs and the Middle East war, but Goldman Sachs believes renewed energy price increases, higher long-term interest rates and weakening AI-driven growth are putting downward pressure on global growth in 2027.
Goldman Sachs has raised its estimate of the direct drag from real estate on real GDP growth in 2026 from 1.5 percentage points to 1.8 percentage points, but expects it to narrow to 1.3 percentage points in 2027. The key is the property sector’s declining share of the economy; diverging home prices, shrinking household wealth and lost local land revenues will determine how long the adjustment lasts.
Goldman Sachs’ 23 October tracker shows that domestic flights, port throughput and existing-home transactions improved over the past week, while new-home transactions remained well below their year-earlier level and steel demand declined. Fiscal issuance progress and falling funding rates provide another line of observation.
