Quiet Monday in August
August 11, 2014
The dollar is unchanged against the yen, sterling and kiwi, up 0.2% versus the euro and 0.1% relative to the Swiss franc and Australian dollar, but down 0.1% against the loonie.
Geopolitical worries have been somewhat alleviated by the ceasefire in Gaza and Russian troop pull-back from the border with Ukraine. Iraq remains a confusing mess, however.
U.S. stocks rose about 0.3% in the first half-hour of trading after gains in European and Asian markets earlier. Equities rose 2.4% in Japan, 1.5% in China, 1.2% in Indonesia, 1.3% in Hong Kong, and 0.8% in India. European stocks have climbed 1.7% in Germany, 1.0% in France, 0.9% in Britain, 0.8% in Switzerland, 0.5% in Italy and 0.6% in Spain.
Gold dipped 0.1% to $1,309.10 on the Comex. WTI oil is up 0.2% at $97.87 per barrel.
Ten-year sovereign debt yields edged up two basis points in Germany and Britain and by a basis point in Japan.
The Bank of Japan formally released its full monthly economic assessments, but markets already knew the details from Friday’s post-Board meeting statement. The overall view is unchanged. There were downgrades to the views on exports and industrial output but an upgrade in the characterization of income and jobs growth.
Japan’s tertiary index of service sector activity dipped 0.1% in July and was 1.5% lower than in July 2013.
Japanese machine tool orders, whose on-year growth had slowed to 34.1% in June from 48.7% in May, rebounded to a gain of only 37.7% in July.
Seasonally adjusted consumer confidence in Japan recorded a third monthly improvement in a row during July, a gain of 0.4 points to 41.5, an 8-month high. Such bottomed at 37.0 in April when the consumption tax was lifted to 8% from 5%.
Despite continuing quantitative easing, Japanese M2 money growth stayed at 3.0% in July. Such posted on-year growth of 3.3% in 2Q, down from 4.0% in 1Q, 4.2% in 4Q13 and even less than the 3.6% average pace in full-2013. M1 money growth slowed to 4.0% from 4.3% in June and 5.7% in 4Q13.
Chinese consumer prices ticked 0.1% higher on month and, as forecast, posted the same 2.3% 12-month rate of increase in July and recorded in June. Producer prices were 0.9% lower than a year earlier. On-year PPI declines have been recorded without interruption since March 2012.
Malaysian industrial output grew 0.5% on month and accelerated to a 12-month 7% advance in June from 6% in May.
Erdogan won the Turkish presidential election over the weekend.
Swiss retail sales growth of 3.4% on year in June far exceeded expectations and followed a 0.5% 12-month dip in May.
The Conference Board reported gains of 0.6% and 0.1% in Britain’s leading and coincident indices of economic indicators in June. The LEI had risen 0.5% in both May and April.
Norwegian CPI inflation accelerated to 2.2% in July from 1.9% the month before. But Danish and Czech consumer prices only rose by 0.8% and 0.5% in the year to July.
Housing starts in Canada again surpassed expectations, rising to 200.1K in July from 198.7K in June. Mexican industrial production dipped 0.1% on month but rose 2.0% on year in June.
No U.S. data releases were scheduled today.
Copyright 2014, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: Japanese tertiary index, Ukraine
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