Mind The Gap

Without a doubt Australia’s jobless rate rising to 6 percent last month, the highest level seen since July 2003, cased quite a stir in the markets. Employment unexpectedly shrank by 3,700. Economists polled by Bloomberg had forecast up to a 15,000 gain. Australia’s currency, in a correlated move, fell 0.9 percent to 89.42 U.S. cents. […]

The UK’s conference board figure has decreased by 0.1%, after five months of increases, the LEI decreased slightly in December. A substantial decline in the Volume of Expected Output, coupled with softening consumer confidence and lower stock prices, was behind the decline in December, but these were offset by the interest rate spread and order

Investors and traders have experienced a quiet two news days overall this week with Australian data dominating the high impact news landscape. House prices in Australia rose by 3.4% in the quarter and by circa 9.3% overall throughout 2013. Sydney with a 13.8% annual rise took first place in what (on the face of it)

In overnight news Japan took centre stage with a poor consumer sentiment publication, the index falling to 40.5. But this medium impact news release was overshadowed by the high impact news release revealing that Japan’s record balance of payments deficit came in ahead of the last print, but just short of the prediction made by

Looking at the latest UK news the index of production in the UK has risen to 0.5 in the last Q of 2013 just below the 0.7% rise many analysts forecast. Manufacturing has risen sharply in the period temporarily defying those who continually suggested that the UK’s economic growth is unbalanced. In other UK news

Retail sales in Europe came in significantly below expectations in this morning’s data published by Eurostat. Analysts had expected a fall of circa -0.7%, however, at -1.6% down the figure has taken the analyst community by surprise. It must be taken on board that this is an ‘official’ stats release and not a survey published

Ask many analysts, market commentators and economists which data they trust as a herald of good fortune to come and many will suggest that construction data is “the one” given that it has an incredible pull through effect on the rest of the economy. It works like this; more houses, apartments, commercial buildings and infrastructure

This morning’s high impact news events have been dominated by the PMIs for the UK and Europe. As readers will have noted before we do have reservations with regards to Markit Economics ‘telling it how it is’ given that they do appear to cheer lead the UK’s data in particular, knowing that a positive slant

European data has dominated the high impact news items landscape this morning with unemployment for the region being the most dominant news. In the wider area unemployment fell by 162K, with the rate remaining at 12%, just below the analysts’ expectation of 12.1%. The wider European unemployment rate fell from 10.8% to 10.7% in December.

After the taper decision by the FOMC yesterday evening, in the overnight trading session Asian shares were sold off as emerging market jitters re-appeared and nowhere were these jitters more evident than in Japan, where the Nikkei index closed down 3.3%. China’s CSI sold off as the manufacturing PMI (courtesy of Markit Economics) came in