Daily

It's been a big week for data in Korea, and there was more today, with the end-month activity numbers. Retail sales bounced, but other sectors remained subdued. Data for Japan today showed retail sales being weak, but consumer confidence has improved, and UE has fallen to a new post-covid low.

Today's big event was Korea's MPC, and the separate release of the local version of JOLTS data. In Japan, July unit sales at Toyota and nationwide exports in the first 10 days of August were stable. Taiwan's monitoring index in July was also unchanged, suggesting GDP growth has slowed, but not much.

Today my focus was again Korea, with the important business sentiment survey for August, and a longer review of the cycle before tomorrow's BOK meeting. Elsewhere, China released profits data for July (weak again) and there was August consumer confidence in Taiwan (also soft).

In today's update, a slowdown in upstream services price inflation in Japan, and firm property price expectations in the Korean consumer confidence survey. In Taiwan, retail sales are still falling, while IP shows the industrial sector is now also starting to lose some momentum.

BOJ Governor Ueda's Jackson Hole remarks at the weekend on the labour market have relevance for interest rates in Japan, and, given demographic trends, economics more broadly in the region. Also, an update on high-frequency price data in China.

The CPI release in Japan was the most important today, showing the three main measures of inflation moving in different directions. In addition, labour market data in Taiwan show the unemployment rate continuing to creep lower.

Today's main releases were in Korea, with trade data for the first 20 days of August, and July PPI. S&P released the flash August PMI for Japan. Also, some charts on foreign trade and monetary data in China from the detailed releases that follow the headline data published earlier in the month.

Quite a lot today, starting with a longer thematic piece on the outlook for Japanese consumption. In terms of the cycle, there's June machine orders and July exports for Japan, and July export orders and Q2 BOP data for Taiwan.

Korea's Q2 household debt release is important, given it is such an important issue for BOK thinking about monetary policy in the short-term, and the economy in the longer-term. The structural issues facing Korea are nicely analysed in a BOK report looking at the similarities with Japan.

No major releases today, but a few bits and pieces from China: the falls in interest rates and shifts in loan structure shown in the PBC's Friday monetary policy report; the re-acceleration in auto exports in today's detailed trade data; and signs of capital inflows in Friday's settlement data.

Many updates today. In China, property prices and the outlook for CPI, as well as the official activity data for July. The overall tone remains weak. By contrast, the first estimate of Q2 GDP data for Japan was solid. And detailed Q2 data for Taiwan, together with 2H25 forecasts, were more bullish.

Price data for Korea's foreign trade shows the same trends as for Japan: import prices falling YOY, and auto export prices dropping MoM. Also, China's monetary and credit data from yesterday. The rise in the credit impulse lost momentum, but stabilisation in the M1:M2 ratio is holding.