US GDP Final for Q3 2011 - lower GDP but Initial Jobless Claims lower which is good

Today at 8:30 EST 13:30 GMT the GDP figures for the USA came out. This is the final reading for the 3rd quarter of 2011 and thus are a bit dated. These came along with the weekly jobless figures which last week broke the critical 400k bull/bear line and printed 366k coming back down to the April lows, which is where things were before fears of a double dip grew during the summer of 2011. There was also personal consumption and pce core, the fed's perfered inflation indicator.

It is rare for there to be such a range of estimates for a final release of GDP but after the Advanced of 2nd reading of Q3 back in November where the figure came out at 2.0% below the 2.5% expected, the range of analysts estimates grew quite wide...wider in fact than last month's estimates which had a 0.9 range this month had a 1.3 range.

The IJC did come in slightly lower this week than last week, not alot but it is positive that it maintained the lower reading from last week into this one. The GDP was -0.2 deviation below the median estimate of all analysts surveyed by bloomberg and the risky assets did sell off. Here the figures:



US GDP QoQ Annualized - Final Q3 2011
Estimates: Median +2.0%, Average +2.0%, Range +1.5% to +2.8% (majority +1.8% to +2.2%)
Actual: +1.8% Prior: +2.0% No Revision


US Personal Consumption
Estimates: Median +2.3% Average +2.2% Range +1.5% to +2.4% (majority +2.2% to +2.4%)
Actual: +1.7% Prior: +2.3% No Revision

US GDP Price Index
Estimates: Median +2.5% Average +2.5% Range +2.0% to +2.5% (majority +2.5)
Actual: +2.6% Prior: +2.5% No Revision

US Core PCE q/q
Estimates: Median +2.0% Average: +2.0% Range +2.0% to +2.0%
Actual: +2.1% Prior: +2.0% No Revision

US Initial Jobless Claims w/w
Estimates: Median +380k Average: +378k Range +355k to +400k
Actual: +364k Prior: +366k Revised: +368k

US Continuing Claims w/w
EStimates: Median +3600k Average +3602k Range +3560k to +3650k
Actual: +3546k Prior: +3603k Revised: +3625k

Now for some charts...what was interesting is looking at last months reaction to the -0.5 deviation lower from +2.5 expected to the +2.0 of the actual release. Normally there would have been a good move lower on the Japanese Yen crosses but instead we saw broad US Dollar strength on risk aversion. I know it might not make sense that the US Dollar would strengthen on bad data from the USA but when markets get bad data they respond by dumping riskier high yeild assets and buying safe US bonds...it is the largest safest market in the world, but they don't yeild so much. First chart is the Australian Dollar versus US Dollar AUDUSD 10 second chart:

next is the CADJPY, which has a high correlation to stock indices...last month the US GDP was released with Canadian Retail Sales at the same time, which was higher while GDP was lower, so it was not a good pair to trade last month, this month it was good:

Nice to look at the DAX chart, this is the index for the German stock market, but it moves nicely on US news as well. This is the 1 minute chart:

should include the Emini S&P 500 to be complete..1 minute chart:

and finally the USDJPY is included because this was the safest pair to trade on US news, this is because you cannot always be sure that risk-on will mean selling US Dollars and risk-off will be buying US Dollars...sometimes risk-on is selling the Japanese yen and risk-off is buying the yen. if there is good US data it should mean that the US currency should strengthen but because of the risk-on/off dynamic it is not always the case. Because the yen is alot like the US dollar in the case it is sometimes good to trade this pair as you go negative the US dollar on bad data and you go positive the japanese yen on risk aversion. The market right now is more slanted towards buying US dollars on bad news and risk aversion or risk-off than buying japanese yen, this is not always the case as many bad GDP releases in the past this pair has sold off. Here is the chart today which shows this didn't work today...