Our Insights

In a welcome trend for Indian consumers, vegetable oil prices are falling after a surge earlier in the year. To explore the roots of this price movement, we travel to the key sources of palm oil: Malaysia and Indonesia, which together account for 80% of global exports.

CEIC has added polling data from YouGov (in partnership with the Economist magazine) tracking Americans' voting intentions. The most recent survey indicates that Donald Trump and Joe Biden continue to be in a tight race, with the former president recently pulling ahead of the incumbent by a single percentage point.

Trade-weighted exchange rates strip away the outsized importance of the dollar in global currency markets, enabling a more holistic perspective on an economy. Indonesia, which implemented a surprise rate hike recently to shore up the rupiah, is an interesting case in point.

Heavy rainfall has led to widespread flooding in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. With dozens of fatalities and more than 100,000 people forced to leave their homes, there will be a hit to the public finances as the government helps victims and rebuilds infrastructure.

Building infrastructure has been a key focus of the Indian government during Narendra Modi's decade in power. The benefits for the 71 million people building all those roads, port upgrades and industrial facilities have played out differently by region; many workers have seen inflation erode their wage gains.

CEIC's China Premium Database contains high-frequency information on airline trips, including regional breakdowns. This kind of granular mobility data allows analysts to assess differing trends in China's provinces, as well as see a near-real time weekly time series that can feed into nowcasts.

Brazil's real sank to a one-year low in April, buffeted by the US higher-for-longer interest-rate surprise that has hit many emerging-market currencies. However, the currency's performance could have been worse: exporters are taking advantage of this weakness to repatriate profits held abroad at an advantageous exchange rate, supporting the real.

Tesla chief Elon Musk does not dominate the US electric-vehicle market the way he did three years ago. Tapping some of the newest time series in CEIC’s database, sourced from Cox Automotive and the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), we show the inroads made by companies like Rivian and Ford.

Malaysia is a commodity-exporting nation, sending palm oil, petroleum products and aluminium around the world. As such, despite increasing economic diversification, the vigor of its economy could be correlated fairly closely to commodity prices – until recently.

We've added more monthly online sales data to our China Premium Database. Tracking three of China's major e-commerce platforms, we can examine seasonal trends in the wake of the Lunar New Year festival, compare pre- and post-pandemic demand, gain insight into consumers' most popular electronics brands and more.

Will the European Central Bank wait for the Federal Reserve to cut rates first? That was conventional wisdom not long ago, but the diverging inflation trends in the US and euro area – with the likely next step visualized here by CEIC's proprietary nowcasts – mean that Christine Lagarde is probably going to loosen policy before Jerome Powell does. (The ECB president has indicated this is likely at the central bank's June meeting.)

Brazilian inflation continues to ease. To get a sense of its future trajectory, we can explore the prices for goods at manufacturers' factory gates, or producer-price inflation (PPI) – which has, in fact, been in deflation for some time.