The PMI is published by Markit Economics, a company which specialises in compiling business surveys and economic indices.
The PMI is available for 26 countries and key regions, such as the Euro zone or BRICs, and is used by central banks in different countries to help make interest rate decisions. Analysts use data to reliably forecast official data such as GDP. Some key features of the PMI are: indices are rather based on factual data than opinions, expressions or other subjective indicators and, data covers almost all private sector economic activity in many countries.
The PMI focuses on 4 different sectors: manufacturing, construction, services and retail, each published at a different time. The PMI may be compared to the official Industrial production data issued by Eurostat. The accuracy of the PMI is quite high since its data lines up with the data issued by Eurostat related with industrial production.
Higher industrial production is considered as a positive signal meaning the economy is growing, which brings more investors to that country. This in turn strengthens that currency (currency appreciation).
On the other hand, one should also consider that very high levels of industrial production and GDP growth rates may lead to overheating of the economy, which may bring high levels of inflation and a decrease in the value of money, i.e. the real rates of return leading to depreciation of the currency because of the capital withdrawal from the financial market.
Periodicity of publication
Depending on the sector, the PMI is published between the first day of the next month and the third day of the next reference month. By the end of the following month of the reference period, broad PMI data is released (including the euro zone).