November output up in Japan but down in Singapore

Japanese industrial production rose in November for the first time in three months.

Japan Nov industrial output rises 1.5 pct mth-on-mth
Industrial output in November rose a seasonally adjusted 1.5 pct from the previous month, slightly below expectations, preliminary data issued by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) showed. The METI forecast that production will fall 0.9 pct in December, but will rise 2.8 pct in January. Industrial production in November was projected to have increased 1.7 pct from October, according to the average of forecasts from 22 research institutes polled by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun...

Singapore's manufacturing sector, however, continued to slow down in November.

Monthly Manufacturing Performance - November 2004
Total manufacturing output increased 13.2% in November compared to last November with strong growth in the biomedical manufacturing, transport engineering and chemicals clusters. Excluding the biomedical manufacturing cluster, November's output grew 7.3%. The three-month moving average for total manufacturing output grew 9.0%. However, the seasonally adjusted month-on-month index declined by 3.8%. The cumulative total manufacturing output for the first eleven months this year increased by 13.0% compared to the same period in 2003.

The key number, of course, is the 3.8 percent decline in seasonally-adjusted month-on-month output.

This slowdown does not bode well for the Singapore stock market, as I discuss in "Slowing economy may weigh on Singapore stock market".