The economic sentiment turned massively negative in Europe during the lock-downs. Expectations for the future also fell really low into negative territory. The economic sentiment for the time being has been increasing since April and today’s report showed another improvement to 71.5 points. But expectations remain largely negative and today they dived even lower, despite another improvement in the current situation. Below is the Zew report:

Germany August ZEW Survey

Slight delay in the release by the source. The headline reading pretty much underscores the fact that the economic recovery is largely tepid and not really growing at the pace most optimists would’ve hoped over the past few months. Despite another jump in the expectations component, it is once again perhaps a case of survey respondents hoping for the better but the underlying economic situation is failing to live up to that perception in the second-half of the year.