September quarter GDP from Australia

Contraction of 0.5% q/q ... MISS (and a bad one, much worse than consensus estimates)

  • expected -0.1% q/q, prior revised higher to +0.6%, from +0.5%
  • Today's q/q contraction is the worst performance for the economy since March of 2011

Up 1.8% y/y

  • expected +2.2%, prior +3.3%

More (data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics):

  • Private investment in new buildings detracted 0.3 percentage points from GDP growth,
  • New engineering and new and used dwellings detracted 0.2 and 0.1 percentage points respectively
  • Public capital expenditure detracted 0.5 percentage points
  • Net exports detracted an additional 0.2 percentage points from growth
  • Australia's terms of trade rose 4.5 per cent through the September quarter

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Crystalizing the 'soft patch' for the economy July - September.

If Q4 is negative (q/q ) also this would meet the definition for a technical recession (<-- no shit, Sherlock :-D), Australia's first in 25 years. Fortunately Q4 (at this stage) is looking much better than Q3, both locally and globally.

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AUD has dropped since the release. the result (-0.5% q/q) is at the lower end of the estimates (consensus was -0.1%), so tis a very bad miss indeed.

more to come