Greetings all and welcome to Jackson Hole eve!
On the calendar in Asia today .... um, look why don't you go back to bed? :-D
We do get the New Zealand July trade balance, that's due at 2245GMT
- Trade balance expected is -200m, prior was +242m
- Exports expected is 4.42bn, prior was 4.70bn
- Imports expected is 4.60bn, prior was 4.46bn
I've seen a bit of a preview via BNZ, they are not looking for a deficit this month:
- With July's commodity export prices 18% above year-ago levels (in $NZ terms) we might yet be too pessimistic in estimating a 12% lift in goods exports over the period. For merchandise imports we estimate a 6% gain y/y (noting there was a lump of aircraft importation in July last year). This would deliver a monthly deficit of $135m
From Japan it's the international securities flows data for the week (ended August 18). Barclays points out than in July (in brief):
Japanese investors' foreign bond investment accelerated in July
- Japanese institutional investors increased their foreign bond investment significantly in July. Monthly international transactions in securities show that net outflows reached their highest level since July 2016.
- By investor type, net purchases of foreign bonds by banks and life insurers increased further, marking their highest outflows since September 2015 and October 2016, respectively.
- Weekly data indicates that net purchases of foreign bonds by Japanese investors continued and even accelerated in the first week of August amid falling long-end UST yields.
Later (in the Japanese afternoon) - leading and coincident indexes for June (final)
