Japan’s economy has officially fallen into recession. The release of economic data for the three months to the 30th September revealed that the economy had contracted by an annualised 0.8%. This follows a revised contraction in the three months to the end of June of 0.7%. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

It had been widely expected that this would be the case but the pace of the slowdown was greater than consensus forecast which was for a slowdown of 0.2%. A fall in private consumption, business investment and inventories all contributed to the fall. This is now the second recession which Japan has endured sine the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took control in December 2012 and could put pressure on the central bank governor Kuroda to boost fiscal and monetary stimulus when they meet later this week.

The Nikkei 225, the Japanese equity index, fell just over 1% in today’s trading session. Government bond yields however were little changed.