Not every economy in the world is in a rut, just a majority of them are. One of the exceptions seems to be the country of New Zealand. Although the New Zealand economy isn’t great, retail sales numbers that were released yesterday surprised even some of the most optimistic economists.   The median estimate of 13 top economists for Bloomberg predicted a 0.3% increase in retail sales over the prior quarter, however the actual number came in over 4 times that number at 1.2%.

The surprise to the upside has sent the currency up immediately, and has also given their central bank Governor more room to continue to raise interest rates. Economists give the the country a 50% chance of increasing the interest rate even higher during the next meeting.  In a world economy that seems to have been deluged by bad news as of late, any bit of good news, especially unexpected good news like we saw yesterday can go far in at least reassuring markets worldwide.