Manufacturing remains robust

Reuters reports on US manufacturing in March:

U.S. manufacturing growth moderated in March... The ISM's...index eased to 55.2 in March, from 56.7 in February and below Wall Street forecasts of a rise to 57.9... The survey's job market index eased to 52.5 from 55.0, while the measure of new orders backed off to 58.4 from 61.9.

...construction spending in February:

Just one month earlier, the construction sector experienced a 0.8 percent spike in spending, double the amount foreseen by economists. Private residential spending surged 1.3 percent to a record high.

...pending home sales from the National Association of Realtors:

The organization's Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in February, was at 117.7, down 0.8 percent from January and 5.2 percent from a year ago.

Still, January's index was revised up to 118.6 from an originally reported 116.3, muddying the message.

...and March auto sales:

In the auto sector, General Motors Corp.'s U.S. sales were down 14.6 percent compared with March of last year, its biggest slide since October, while Ford Motor Co.'s overall sales were down 4.6 percent, hurt by sluggish sales of sport utility vehicles.

Manufacturing generally remained robust in most parts of the world, the JPMorgan Global PMI holding steady at 55.2 in March.

In Europe, the euro zone PMI rose to 56.1 in March, the highest since September 2000, from 54.5 in February, but in Britain, the PMI fell to 50.8 from a revised 51.5 in February.

In China, the CLSA PMI rose to an eight-month high of 51.0 in March from 50.7 in February.

In Japan, the PMI slipped to 56.3 in March from 57.0 in February, in line with the findings from the Bank of Japan's Tankan survey, which showed a drop in the headline index to 20 in March from a one-year high of 21 in December, but which also revealed that large Japanese companies planned to increase spending by 2.7 percent this year.