Upbeat economic signals harder to find

<p>Kia ora,</p><p>Welcome to Monday’s Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.</p><p>I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz.</p><p>And today we lead with news upbeat economic signals are harder to find.</p><p>But first, let's take a look at what economic signals we can expect in the next few days.</p><p>It will be a busy week in the US, with the Fed interest rate decision on Thursday (NZT) and no change is expected by financial market pricing, and their CPI inflation rate comes on Wednesday (NZT). The week will also feature data on retail sales, and the University of Michigan consumer sentiment reading.</p><p>Elsewhere we will be following the ECB and Bank of Japan monetary policy decisions.</p><p>And China will be releasing industrial production, retail sales, and fixed asset investment data, while India will announce its inflation rate and industrial production figures. From Australia we will get consumer and business confidence and their May labour market data this week, also on Thursday.</p><p>Of course, locally our current account position for March will come out on Wednesday, along with our Q1-2023 GDP result. Financial markets expect a tiny contraction to come after the Q4-2023 contraction, so the headlines will scream 'technical recession'. Bank analysts aren't coming down on the side of contraction however. Not so technical will be the REINZ data for May which we should get this week. It is unlikely to uncover any green shoots.</p><p>Over the weekend, and as we have noted elsewhere, we got confirmation China has no consumer inflation. Their <a href="http://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/zxfb/202306/t20230609_1940479.html" target="_blank"><strong>official data</strong></a> for May reported their annual inflation rate edged up to +0.2% in May 2023 from April's 26-month low of +0.1%, but less than market estimates of +0.3%. Between April and May, prices slipped slightly. None of this paints a picture of substantial demand. Milk,