020 7898 0500The purchasing managers’ indices released earlier this week were encouraging to say the least. Following a prolonged period of underwhelming data from the eurozone, there was cause to be optimistic once more. However, figures released yesterday showed that German industrial orders surprisingly fell by 2.5% month-over-month in April 2018, which was significantly below the 0.8% rise the markets had been expecting.
In truth, this didn’t affect the euro, which actually climbed against sterling and the dollar, but then perhaps this is because the third estimate of the eurozone’s GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2018 came in as expected. The figure of 2.5% is certainly encouraging and is significantly better than the UK’s.
Today we will see Germany’s balance of trade report for April. It showed a surplus of some €25.2 billion last month so it will be interesting to see whether this surplus has contracted or widened in the month since. We will also see the industrial production figures from Germany.
