Our Insights

CEIC offers its users the Johnson Redbook Index, a high-frequency indicator that is generated by analyzing year-on-year same-store sales growth at large retailers. It’s showing a pickup in consumer spending this month – contrasting with the decelerating official retail sales data recently released for May.

Singapore has been a key hub for trading for decades, but its financial sector’s increasing importance – especially to American banking and insurance firms – pushed foreign direct investment to a record.

China’s tourists are traveling again, but the recovery is somewhat uneven -- depending on the destination. Flights to Japan are back at pre-pandemic levels, while flights to Singapore are increasing but haven’t yet reached that milestone. Meanwhile, flights to the US are just one-fifth of the 2019 trend.

Trade-weighted exchange rates aim to strip away the effect of the outsized strength of the dollar, gaining a more holistic perspective on an economy's interdependence with its most important trading partners. Saudi Arabia is an interesting case, given it pegs its currency to the greenback.

India had registered 16 consecutive months of positive equity fund flows as of April. In February, the $7 billion inflow was a record. The rest of emerging Asia saw outflows in 5 of those 16 months – almost one-third of the time. Meanwhile, India's share of the equity funds under management for emerging Asia surged above 40%.

In Chile, producer price index is linked to the crucially important copper industry, where prices spiked to a record this year before partially retreating. When measuring the value of Chile’s imports, copper is also a factor: “intermediate” imports include inputs that are important for the mining industry.

Indian agricultural productivity has grown over the decades, but has not kept pace with other emerging markets like Bangladesh and Vietnam. This provides important context to India’s surprising election result, which saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi win fewer seats than expected in key agricultural areas.

China, Japan and South Korea say they want to accelerate talks on free trade. Examining the historic data, we can see that Japan and South Korea remain major trading partners for China in absolute terms – but in relative terms, they have become less important parts of China’s overall trade mix.

In the wake of the devastating floods in Brazil and increasing fiscal stress, the nation’s currency has been sinking. We can gain insight into this phenomenon by tracking the fund outflow data compiled by our partners at EPFR.

The first rate cut by the European Central Bank in five years sent equities higher across the eurozone. Soon thereafter, European Parliament elections saw far-right movements, especially in France and Germany, increase their influence; French President Emmanuel Macron called a snap national election in response. The next day of trading saw broad equity weakness.

US industrial production is likely to show stagnation (but not a decline) for May; meanwhile, the American consumer remains robust, according to CEIC’s latest nowcasts.

Copper’s spike earlier this year was historic. (It followed a sharp draw-down in global inventories at the end of 2023 and start of 2024.) Producing nations, especially Chile and Peru, have been the beneficiaries.