Things Don’t Ever Seem to Change in Europe as the Economic Data Keeps Disappointing

The Eurozone economy has been weakening for a long time and the downtrend has been picking up pace as months go by. The public is expecting things to get better, but the situation keeps getting worse and I expect it to continue like that until the global economy starts recuperating.

The factory orders report released last month from Germany showed a big decline of 2.7% for July. That was revised higher to -2.1% today but that’s still a major decline in orders. Today’s report was expected to come in negative again for last month and it did so, but the decline of 0.6% for August was bigger than expectations of -0.4%.

The Sentix investor confidence from the Eurozone has been deteriorating this year, showing the shape of the sentiment among investors. It improved a bit last month to -11 points, from -13.7 in August. But, it was expected to deteriorate further this month to -12.9 points. The actual reading came in softer than expected at -16.8 points.

So, the situation keeps deteriorating in the Eurozone. EUR/USD is a bit lower today, but it’s coming from the USD side mostly.