
Everything Keeps Deteriorating in Europe
The global economy has been weakening for more than a year and the economy of the Eurozone is where the weakness is more evident. The manufacturing and industrial sectors have been in recession for quite some time and the recession is getting deeper, instead of improving. The confidence and the business climate are deteriorating and the figures below show just that:
- Eurozone final consumer confidence -7.6 vs -6.5 prior
- Economic confidence 100.8 vs 101.1 expected
- Business climate indicator -0.19 vs -0.24 expected
- Industrial confidence -9.5 vs -8.8 expected
- Services confidence 9.0 vs 9.2 expected
The consumer confidence fell to -7.6 points, economic confidence softened to 100.8 points, and so did the industrial and the services confidence. Business climate is a bit better, but only slightly and it’s still negative. One things that we can observe is the fact that the weakness in manufacturing and industrial sectors is spilling into the service sector.
The sentiment is now at the weakest point since January 2015, which doesn’t bode well as we head into Q4 and the end of the year. Let’s see if the QE programme which will start in November will have some impact on the economy. If it doesn’t, the ECB will be forced to ease again so the Euro is expected to remain bearish for some time.