020 7898 0500On what was a fairly quiet day for UK and US economic data, attention turned to the eurozone which released a raft of relatively underwhelming readings. Eurozone business confidence dropped to 1.34 in March from 1.48 the month before and against an expectation of 1.39. It is the lowest reading since September 2017.
Meanwhile, the industrial, services and economic sentiment indices all came in below expectations. The readings were 6.4, 16.3 and 112.6 respectively, against a forecast of 7.0, 16.5 and 113.4 respectively. It is nothing to be too alarmed by but it is curious to consider how many forecasts have been missed in 2018. Threats of a trade war have certainly not helped confidence across the eurozone so any resolution could see a bounce back before long.
Today we have the German Gfk consumer confidence for April which is expected to dip slightly from 10.8 to 10.7. It will be interesting to see whether that data release misses expectations…
