Japanese GDP Shows Significant Drop; UK Retail Sales Watched for Inflation Implications

European equities will see a lift on Thursday, indicating a mini rally is occurring after the sell of that close the previous week. The Asian finished mixed as markets reacted to the much lower quarterly GDP data out of Japan. Moody's downgraded the credit ratings of six banks in Denmark, which gave a pause to some of the risk buying. The FTSE 100 Index is up 0.3 before the beginning of trading. Today we won't see much in terms of macro economic data during the European session but we will see the U.K. retail sales data for the month of April, and the estimates are calling for a yearly rise of 2.2 percent. This would be a significant rise from the 0.9 percent that was seen in March. Recent data has shown dramatic increases in inflation, which complicates the policy bias for the Bank of England. Recent statements suggest there are downside risks to growth so there is a possibility that today's data will miss the elevated estimates. Recent stories have been seen showing that credit ratings for Australian banks have been lowered and the same happened again today for six more Danish banks. Read the full post at

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