Confidence Plummets to Three-Year Low in Europe
Europeans are, as you might have assumed, far from confident. The latest eurozone consumer and business confidence reading posted another fall in October. To make matters worse, the core economies continued to show a confidence deterioration in Germany and France.
The European Commission released its Economic Sentiment Indicator for October, which was down to 84.5 from 85.2 in September. Overall, this was the worst reading seen on this measurement in about three years.
Bloomberg had a consensus estimate of 84.4 and Dow Jones had a consensus of 84.2. The reading is a further move under the historic average of 100.00. If behavior follows sentiment, the report suggests that European consumer spending is not likely to bounce back rapidly.
Industrial confidence fell to -18.0 in October from -15.9 in September. Consumer confidence ticked up and service confidence was slightly lower. Consumer confidence edged slightly higher but only to -25.7 from -25.9, and sentiment among services providers worsened a touch to -12.1 from -11.9.
The commission said:
Although the majority of the Member States witnessed a drop in economic sentiment, this was only the case for three out of the seven largest Member States: the ESI registered falls in Poland (-2.8), France ( 1.8) and Germany (-1.4). However, the ESI continued last month's recovery in the UK (+5.2) and Spain (+1.8) and rose slightly in the Netherlands (+0.8) and Italy (+0.5).
JON C. OGG
Filed under: 24/7 Wall St. Wire, Economy, International Markets
