Japan’s [B]Trade Balance[/B] yielded a narrower monthly deficit than economists expected, printing at 97.1 trillion yen in March versus expectations of a -250.7 trillion shortfall. Still, the reading is far from encouraging, revealing trading terms tumbled by a whopping 99% from a year before. The pattern is a familiar one: dwindling overseas sales have pushed firms to scale back capacity, boosting unemploymentand weighing on consumer spending to keep downward pressure on overall growth and sink Japan into the worst economic downturn since the Second World War. Indeed, exports shrank -45.6% in the year to March, a reading within a hair of last month’s record-setting -49.4% annual decline. As we suggested in our Weekly Trading Forecast, the release had little immediate impact on Yen price action because the forces behind the dour data have been priced into the exchange rate for some months now, with the Japanese unit supported by a reinvigorated link to equity markets.