Economic growth data from japan for the fourth quarter of 2018
All the priors and the preliminary release can be found here.
The final readings now:
- GDP (seasonally adjusted), final, 0.5% q/q
- GDP Annualized (seasonally adjusted), final 1.9% y/y
- GDP Nominal (seasonally adjusted), final 0.4% q/q
- GDP Deflator y/y, final
- GDP Consumer Spending (aka private Consumption) 0.4% y/y
- GDP Business Spending 2.7% y/y
Growth coming in quicker than preliminary measures had suggested.
The better results (on this and on the spending data out earlier) are a positive for the yen to extent they a bit more comfort for the BOJ. I would not emphasise this too much though, the BOJ is still a very long way from the inflation target and will in no way be considering an exit from easy monetary policy at any time soon.
but, yeah, at the margin a yen positive.
Data out at the same time:
BoP Current Account Balance for January Y600.4bn
- expected ¥ 161.0B, prior ¥ 452.8B
BoP Current Account Adjusted: Y b1833n
- expected ¥ 1385.3B, prior ¥ 1562.3B
Trade Balance BoP Basis: Y -964.8bn
- expected ¥ -1133.1B, prior ¥ 216.2B
Bank Lending excluding trusts February, y/y: 2.3%
- prior 2.4%
Bank Lending including trusts y/y: 2.4%
- prior 2.4%
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Earlier we got a nice beat for the consumer:
Japanese economic data continues to be choppy, which is better than uniformly bad as we have unfortunately seen for long stretches in the past.
