US Current Account Deficit Beats By 8 Standard Deviations, Shrinks To Smallest In 18 Months

Zero Hedge ^ | 03/21/2017

[SeekAndFind]

The US current account deficit shrank dramatically in Q4.

Beating expectations of -$129 billion by 8 standard deviations, the $112.4 billion print is the smallest deficit since Q2 2015.

 

So 30 economists were way off the estimate with both trade and capital inflows improving -  the balance of goods and services deficit widened to $132.32b (compared to $116.23b prior quarter), and the balance on primary income widened to $61.5b (compared to $41.6b prior quarter).

The current account deficit represents 2.4% of gross domestic product in the fourth quarter after 2.5% in the prior quarter.

This smaller-than-expected current account balance is a positive for Q4 GDP revisions.

[CincyRichieRich]

Math is good; Statistics are great.

Perhaps a GOOD unintended consequence is math skills for US students will improve during Trump’s 8 yrs.

...and the parents of said students...

[Pollster1]

For eight years under the communist, almost every economic report was unexpectedly bad. So far, under a real American, economic reports are consistently off by the same margin but in the opposite direction. If I didn’t know better, I might worry that someone was biasing the predictions to influence public perceptions.

Perhaps Russia hacked our forecasts?

[ctdonath2]

Could use a few more words of explanation.

[dangus]

Current account deficit is (roughly) the trade deficit, right? It’s the flow of money into or out of the country?

[cicero2k]

Remember when Unexpected was an LOL Obama blame shield?

Now Unexpected is good, except MSM will never publish.

To their peril.

[Fhios]

Article kind of hokey if you ask me.

3 sigma is 99.73%
6 sigma is 99.99999998%

8 sigma is not meaningful.

Things start to get dicey past 6 sigma event probabilities 506,797,346-1.

8 sigma would be a mistake as you’re probably looking at a multi-modal distribution on a small sample. Meaning your measuring apples and oranges somewhere and don’t know it.

[qam1]

Remember when Unexpected was an LOL Obama blame shield?

That and the weather. If Trump has a bad month during a winter month the press be just as quick to blame the "Brutal Winter Weather" for holding the economy back as they did all throughout Obama's reign. Suuuurrrree.

[Bishop_Malachi]

“Current account deficit is (roughly) the trade deficit, right? It’s the flow of money into or out of the country?”

_________________________________________________________

It measures the flow of money across U.S. borders for the purpose of buying goods and services. Which is another way of saying it measures the purchase of imports and exports. Since the current account has been negative for decades that is the same thing as saying we’ve run trade deficits for decades.

It’s 1/2 of the “balance of trade” with the capital account being the other half. The capital account measures the flow of money across U.S. borders for the purpose of investment. We’ve had a capital account surplus for decades as well.

[dangus]

Thanks!

[Only1choice____Freedom]

Math is good; Statistics are great.

When I was in school, they called it "sadistics"

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain

[bert]

no..... the current account represents money on hand vs bills owed.

The difference between money in and money out.

[Bishop_Malachi]

Just a slight modification...I meant to say “balance of payments” instead of “balance of trade”.

So, the Chinese for example have had a current account surplus with the U.S. for many years (selling us more goods than we have to them). Since they are not using these dollars to consume our goods by the same amount, they become net lenders to us.

A positive capital account reflects the fact that they are increasing their net ownership of U.S. assets like U.S. treasury bonds, for example.