One of Canada’s most reliable economic indicators for stock-market direction is, curiously, also one of its most underrated. The Ivey Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) may be below the radar, but it has started to take flight.

This index – which tracks business activity in Canada, much the way the vastly more famous Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing PMIs do in the United States – jumped to 52.8 on a seasonally adjusted basis in December from 47.5 in November, the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business reported Monday.