Earlier this week we saw some extremely disappointing ZEW economic sentiment indices from Germany and the eurozone. Investor confidence has been significantly affected by ongoing trade tensions, but there was reason to be cheerful yesterday, with the release of the industrial production figures for May.
Year-on-year, production had been expected to increase from 1.7% to 2.1%, but the figure actually came in at 2.4%. Month-over-month, industrial production significantly recovered from a downwardly revised -0.8% to 1.3%. The euro gained a little bit of ground against the dollar, but the currency markets were fairly quiet throughout the day.
German inflation fell 0.1% to 2.1% which was in line with expectations. Importantly, it fell from the previous month’s 15-month high of 2.2%.