Big news! We’re back to GROWTH again!

February 15th, 2021
1 minute read.

Data
  • One of the great frustrations about analysis is how slow & infrequent the data is.
  • While we can get stock market data by the minute, economic data is monthly & delayed although it has become a bit faster recently. Corporate data is not only slow it’s also only quarterly.
  • So the best measure we have is the monthly economics data.

Imports
  • From the monthly economics data, my personal favorite is the import numbers.
  • The reason i like imports so much is because while exports represents demand from other countries, imports represents our own domestic demand.
  • If imports are growing, that means our economy is growing & strong & not a sign of weakness as so many other analysts seem to think.
Slowdown
  • You can see this in the growth of imports in the last few years.
  • Back in January 2018, imports were growing at +31% from a year earlier. By the end of the year, growth was just +2% & growth turned negative in January 2019 (way before Corona).
  • Growth was -6% by December 2019 & then at -42% in May 2020.

Recovery
  • Imports in May 2020 were only USD 8.4 billion because of the holidays.
  • But from that point the recovery started & by the end of 2020, as we wrote before, growth was back to 0% & imports were at USD 14.4 billion.
  • Now in January 2021 we are finally, after 2 years, back to growth again, +10% from last year.

Nominal
  • You might think this is just because of a low base last year, but it’s not as the big slowdown started in February 2020.
  • At USD 13.3 billion, January imports are higher than the average of the six years from 2015 to 2020 which is USD 12.9 billion.
  • It’s great to be back to growth & theres lots more ahead.