Japan's wholesale inflation came in at 7.2%. Economists expected 7.4%. The difference is 0.2%. That's twenty basis points for those of you who just Googled "basis points."
Undershooting expectations. That's the headline. Japan produced slightly less inflation than a room full of economists guessed it would. These are the same economists who've spent three decades trying to create inflation in Japan like it's some kind of economic science fair project. They finally got their wish and now they're parsing whether 7.2% is materially different from 7.3%.
The Producer Price Index measures what manufacturers pay for goods before they jack up the price and sell them to you. It dropped one-tenth of a percent from June's revised 7.3%. Revised. They can't even get last month's number right the first time but you're supposed to trade based on whether this month beat or missed.
Retail traders saw the miss and immediately started building positions based on their deep understanding of Japanese monetary policy and the complex relationship between wholesale inflation dynamics and Bank of Japan rate decisions. Just kidding. They saw a number that was smaller than another number and clicked buttons accordingly.
The yen moved. Probably. It moves every day. Someone made money. Someone else lost the same amount of money. The wholesale price of industrial materials in Japan changed absolutely nothing about your trading strategy because you don't have a trading strategy.
You have a Bloomberg terminal subscription and a growing sense that maybe your wife was right about the day trading thing. She was. The Japanese producers are paying 7.2% more than they did last year and you're paying 100% more in trading fees than you're making in profits.
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