Japanese Manufacturers:

 https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20201214/p2g/00m/0bu/038000c

Ideas:

Improved sentiment is good but its just the beginning as its still at minus 10. Mostly likely the January sentiment will again decrease even more with the surge in the virus and the new emergency measures put into place, now in January.

However, most indexes are just estimates and many times, because there are many variables in involved, its not always clear how the index sentiment might actually play out in the real world.

What exactly, beside the pandemic, might cause companies to feel less positive at this time or or any time? Mostly likely they watch the economy and the sector they are in very carefully and then make plans accordingly. 

An economy and even a sector or industry is not uniform, as there are always positives and negatives related to an economy and even sectors in an economy. 

While Toyota might continue to have good sales some other car makers might have challenges. Is it because of low consumer demand that some other car makers are not doing as good or is it consumer choice related to what cars they want or like?

Again any kind of gain is a positive, even if the index is still negative. An index doesn't have to be perfectly positive for market conditions to show some kind of positive. There are many variables involved in a market. So different companies within a sector might be looking at different variables than what other companies are looking at.

The Japanese economy was emerging but maybe with the surge of the new virus, it could again dampen consumer demand for some products or services. 

For example a car might seem like a rather large or risky purchase for some now because of the virus situation. But reports recently have shown car sales in Japan were up. So you can never really tell exactly what consumer are thinking.

But the conventional wisdom would say consumers are worried about the future, about their jobs, and about if their companies are going to survive.

Again its not easy to always understand the mood or sentiment of consumers. If its true, the pandemic is maybe lessened a lot in China and as such consumers are back in the spending mood instead of waiting to see what happens in the future.

In the US its even more difficult to figure out. However as bad as the pandemic is in the US, the US is a rather large country and as bad and terrible as things are, there might be pockets of areas where they are not feeling the virus as much as other areas. And as such consumer spending might be almost normal, if we can even say normal now instead of a "new normal."

Of course we don't know exactly if car companies used a lot of promotions and also cut prices as an incentive during the pandemic to get customers to buy cars.

Projected investment is also hard to figure out as some companies might not be in a position to invest in new equipment, technology, or even replace existing plans, equipment, or older technology.

Some companies might be using the pandemic, always with any external or internal challenges, as a reason to wait see what the future will be.

Again any time there is improvement in sentiment is a positive idea. However, as the pandemic as surged again, sentiment could see a decrease.

As to why overseas demand is recovering is somewhat a challenge. For China, is seems predictable that demand would be moving back to normal or a new normal, maybe not back the pre-pandemic level.

But again the US and maybe the EU is somewhat not so clear as to why there might be an increase demand during the pandemic situation. 

Industries, markets and subsets of markets and industries are very much interconnected in that might happen in one sector or a leading sector might have an affect on other sectors.

So as the car market increases, that might be anything that is related to the car market, other sectors or sub-sectors might begin the see increases in demand, especially for suppliers for car makers and other related sectors.

Its also like the housing industry or any other industry. There are so many other sectors or industries interconnected with the housing industry, if the housing industry is doing well, then all the other sectors related to the housing industry most likely are also doing well.

And now we can see the same thing related to the restaurant or service sector industries. All the companies interconnected with restaurant industry might not be doing as well unless the restaurants have innovated and moved more into takeout and delivery services.

The same with fast food places innovating into takeout and delivery services

The same with retail places innovating into as much online selling as brick and mortar selling and or using self-service checkout operations to reduce costs and limit customer challenges related to social distancing.

Service industry companies need to find ways to innovate as a way to keep customers. As mentioned above find ways to offer more takeout and home delivery services. 

For retailers, if possible find ways to sell more online to entice customers to buy even if they don't want to go to the store. And the store of course provide a variety of delivery options, either home delivery or at a conbini near their home location or a central delivery pickup area if they don't want to go to a crowded store, for example like Sogo department store in the Yokohama station area, which is always very crowded on the weekends.

Hotels of course are a different story. Getting customers to come to a hotel for a night or two like in the Tokyo area, before the pandemic was almost a given that most or many hotels were full on Friday and Saturday nights is maybe impossible at this time.

But as been reported many hotels are innovating and creating rooms or spaces for meetings and or individual rooms for those who want or need to work in an environment, but not in their home office environment. 

But of course it remains to be seen if the idea is profitable or even feasible for many hotels.

Have a nice day and be safe!