Investment Desk, Bank Degroof Petercam │ Fears of a slowdown are more pronounced. We are seeing a slight reduction in trade tensions since President Trump announced a partial delay in the imposition of new tariffs on Chinese products. The tariffs on approximately half of the 300,000 goods subject to the measures will be introduced from 15 December instead of September.
CdM | Economic growth in the Eurozone manufacturing sector continued to contract in July, and did so at the fastest rate since December 2012, according to the latest PMI index. Germany remained a source of weakness, registering its largest deterioration in 7 years.
Shaun Riordan │Many of us are already enjoying our summer holidays. Others are packing now, looking forward to relaxing on the beach, or in the mountains. Wherever we are taking our holidays we should make the most of them. A perfect storm is brewing which could hit Europe hard in the autumn, with devasting economic and political consequences.
Consumer price index rose 0.2% in Germany in June compared to May, while the yoy rate rose 1.6% (1.4% in May). The French National Statistics Institute, Insee, announced that the consumer price index (CPI) in France rose 0.2% in June compared to May, while the interannual rate rose 1.2% (0.9% in May). All figures coincide with analysts´ expectations.
Low growth below the 2% threshold coupled with below-target inflation has led our macros to believe that the ECB is taking extra stimulus for granted. This would mean the return of the centra banks’ asset repurchase program, experts at Morgan Stanley point out..
Jean-Christophe Delfim (Edmond de Rothschild ) | Economic growth in the Eurozone was 1.9% in 2018. However, in the last quarter a slowdown was observed to 1.2% yoy, due to the negative contribution of the trade balance (-0.4 pp), as a consequence of the sharp deceleration in exports provoked by international trade disputes.
“There is no probability of deflation, there is very low probability of recession, there are no threats of de-anchoring of inflation expectations,” Mario Draghi said on Thursday. The governor of the European Central Bank announced once again – as he did in March – that it will delay the rate hike at least until 2020 and kept all options open, especially in case economic prospects deteriorate. ECB’s decision is in line with those of other central banks in the world. The Fed has just opened the door to a rate cut, something that Australia and India have already done.
Market concerns persist, and there seems nothing in the short term that will change this. In fact, the latest ECB Financial Stability Report gave evidence of the nest of problems and risks in which we have found ourselves for some time, while recalling the downside balance of current risks, analysts at Intermoney point out.
After the surprise increase in GDP in the US in Q119, we have learnt that, according to the preliminary data by Eurostat, the Eurozone economy grew 0.4% in the first three months of the year, doubling the growth rate of 0.2% registered in the fourth quarter of last year, while in the EU as a whole GDP grew 0.5% compared to 0.3% in the previous quarter.
JP Morgan| Recently, one of the main questions in investors´ minds was whether the weakness which has extended throughout the global manufacturing sector would damage Europe´s domestic economy, which until now has remained relatively solid faced with negative external factors over the last year.