Eurozone: Fresh positive news regarding economic activity - Rabobank

Piotr Matys, EM FX Strategist at Rabobank, explains that Friday brought us fresh positive news regarding economic activity in the Eurozone as the pace of expansion in manufacturing and services PMIs accelerated to 56.2 and 56.5 respectively in March.

Key Quotes

“The composite Eurozone PMI increased from 56 in February to 56.7 in March. In terms of specific countries, the German composite PMI rose almost a full point to 57 and the French composite PMI up 0.7 points to 57.6. As Rabobank’s Elwin de Groot pointed out, the contrast with actual data (the 'hard' data) cannot be emphasized enough (although the actual data always come with a delay).”

“Retail sales growth has been declining in many Eurozone member states (-0.8% YoY in February in Finland) and the same goes for industrial production (-1.1% YoY in Austria in January). That said, Elwin admitted that the survey data tend to be less erratic (i.e. have a better signal-to-noise characteristic) and as such these PMIs, which have improved fairly consistently in recent months, seem to point to strengthening growth in H1.”