Data Diary

It may be premature to be talking inflation – as the odds of the sovereign credit bust taking us through another deflationary downdraft are pretty good. Still it is sensible to keep a weather eye on the inflationary indicators that may matter. If you believe in the theory that says inflation is likely to arrive [...]

Following last months slide into the red (here), new export orders have remained on the wrong side of the ledger in November – from Markit (here): Notably, it is the US and the Eurozone that have enjoyed a renaissance in export orders. China’s exports continue to grow but at a more subdued pace. This is [...]

One of the hooks that various investment banks have been peddling is that the US economy is just in a mid-cycle lull that will be reversed through a pick-up in, amongst other things, capital investment.  As this chart from Northern Trust illustrates (here), there could be some merit to the argument – if only on [...]

World trade continues to recover from the drubbing it took earlier in the year – following is the big picture from the WTO Running through the export and import data by country – USD denominated volumes continued to rise across the board into October (visit the WTO site – World of Warcraft should be worried). [...]

When we last looked at how the commodity sector was tracking, there was a general sense of optimism as conveyed in their end of year reporting (see article from 27 October).  On the face of it, the trade data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics doesn’t seem to confirm this optimism. Big picture [...]

Two useful contributions to the global information glut last week. The first being the documentation coming out of BHP’s AGM. The second a report published by the European Chamber of Commerce on “Overcapacity in China“. So to BHP, the world’s 11th largest company by market capitalisation (at least last Thursday).  This is a company at [...]