US consumer confidence recently rebounded, albeit from a low base. While it's great that people may be feeling more confident, and we can imagine that this means they are willing to spend money to buy products, which generally is a good thing. (as long as they can afford these products, and their products are productive) But is the confidence number just fluff or is there some hard commerce to back it up?
Well, turns out there is. It's nice when things that make sense are actually borne out in data.
Shipping research firm Transport Trackers (TT) came out with an interesting chart showing how key Asian exporter data actually lines up pretty well with US consumer confidence. Without arguing the greater US consumer situation in this post, I think it should b noted that US consumer confidence isn't just fluff, there is tangible export data that goes along with it, ie. real products are demanded in higher quantities and shipped, as shown by TT.
Without expressing a specific view, but noting the market’s long term trends, we have tracked a longer term key Asia exporter against consumer confidence to show the relationship. The MoM correlation is low. But the pattern becomes more clear when looking at the 3‐mth MA.

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