1.   Next Friday, the Commerce Department will announce merchandise trade figures for August.

2.   The current account is released one month after the merchandise trade figures for the same month.

3.   The dollar weakened last month after merchandise trade figures showed a sharp contraction in the U.S.-Japan trade surplus.

4.   The merchandise trade figures are released three weeks earlier than the current-account balance, so the new information was the services balance and capital and financial accounts.

5.   The merchandise figures also are greatly above what Hart and Patterson projected.

6.   The merchandise trade figures are released three weeks earlier than the current account balance.

7.   The merchandise trade figures exclude services, like banking and insurance.

8.   Those merchandise trade figures are based on settled contracts, as opposed to more widely-quoted data measured as goods pass customs.