Euro investors at most bullish for three years
THE CONFIDENCE of investors in the Eurozone rose again this month, climbing to the highest level since early 2011 despite the announcement of poor industrial output in France.
The Sentix investor confidence index reached 13.9 in March, the highest level since the same month three years ago, before the European Central Bank’s swiftly-reversed increase in interest rates.
Any figure over zero indicates that investors are generally confident. Sentiment readings have improved for the struggling currency union since a trough in mid-2012, when the score fell to below minus 30.
Despite the positive reading, industrial output in France did not return to growth in January as expected, according to official data released yesterday. Production dropped by 0.2 per cent from December.
“Given the sharp contraction of retail sales and that of exports, the hard data point towards a poor growth rate this quarter. The longer-term outlook is not too bad, as surveys are a touch less pessimistic,” said BNP Paribas’s Dominique Barbet.
Industrial output in Spain in the year to January was also revealed yesterday morning, with growth of 1.1 per cent from the first month of 2013. The expansion was smaller than the 1.8 per cent that many analysts had expected.
“This was a touch slower than the revised figure of 2.2 per cent year on year for December. Still, it was the third straight increase in the index, after being in negative territory since 2011,” added Victor Echevarria, also of BNP Paribas.
Figures for Greece’s consumer price index (CPI) suggest that the deflationary pressure on the embattled Mediterranean economy lifted slightly last month: prices fell by 1.1 per cent in the year to February, down from the 1.5 per cent decrease in the year to January.