GDP

What the heck is GDP??

Gross Domestic Product, GDP is the total output of goods and services for final use produced within a country (something like total Sales or Revenue in a company financial report). It is widely used by the economist and traders outside to gauge whether a countrys' economy is good or bad. GDP is calculated by the formula below

GDP = C + I + G + (X-M)

         =  Personal Consumptions+Business Investments+Government Spending + (Export - Import)

Personal Consumptions  - The Money Spend within a country, depends on whether the people like to Shopping or not, of course if the people don't have job, they will spend less and affect the GDP. Thats why News releases like Retail Sales, Consumer Confidence and Employment data  is so important in most of the developed countries as this Personal Consumptions most of the time will take up 70% of the GDP.

Business Investment -  People in the country thinks that the economic is good and put their money to expand their business like R&D, buying machines, buying more inventories, Invest in Business premises. etc. etc. News like Business Confidence, Manufacturing PMI or PPI will affect this portion of GDP.

Government Spending - the government expenditures like giving some health benefits, unemployment benefits (claims), National defense etc.etc. The Austerity measures taken in the EURO zone recently simply means that the Government is going to reduce their spending and this will affect the GDP growth at the end. We can get more info about this portion from Fiscal policy or Budget announcement from a country.

Trade balance -Export (income) - Import (expenses) of a country, if income > expenses, the country is earning money, hence good for the economy (GDP); if income < expenses, the country spend more than it can earn, hence bad for the economy (GDP).

So, Leaving other factors unchanged, each of the factors have a positive correlation to GDP, which means if C,I,G remain unchanged, improved trade balance will lead to a growth in GDP while a negative trade balance will lead to economic shrink.

If you guys wanna dig deeper into each countries' GDP report, u can go to the websites below :

U.S. http://www.bea.gov/
UK  http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/index.html
EURO http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/
CANADA http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-eng.html
AUSTRALIA http://www.abs.gov.au/
NEW ZEALAND www.stats.govt.nz/
SWITZERLAND http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index.html
JAPAN : http://www.stat.go.jp/english/index.htm
CHINA : http://www.cbrc.gov.cn/english/index.html