15/2/19: Euro area is sliding toward recession

Based on the latest data through January 2019, Eurozone’s economic problems are getting worse. In 4Q 2018, Euro area posted real GDP growth of just 0,.2% q/q - matching the print for 3Q 2018. Meanwhile, inflation has fallen from 1.7% in December 2018 to 1.6% in January 2018. And Eurocoin - a leading growth indicator for euro area GDP expansion slipped from 0.42 in December 2018 to 0.31 in January 2019. This marked the third consecutive month of decline in Eurocoin, and the steepest fall in 8 months. Worse, July 23016 was the last time Eurocoin was at this level.

Within the last 12 months, Eurozone growth has officially fallen from 0,.7% q/q in 4Q 2017 to 0.2% in 4Q 2018, HICP effectively stayed the same, with inflation at 1.6% in January 2018 agains 1.5% in January 2018. And forward growth indicator has collapsed from 0.95 in January 2018 to 0.31 in January 2019.

Euro area is heading backward when it comes to economic activity, fast.

Germany just narrowly escaped an official recession, with 4Q growth at zero, and 3Q growth at -0.2%

Italy is in official recession, with 3Q 2018 GDP growth of -0.1% followed by 4Q 2018 growth of -0.2%.

Industrial goods production is now down two consecutive months in the Euro area as a whole, with latest print for December 2018 sitting at - 4.2% decline, following a -3.0% y/y fall in November 2018.

Worse, capital goods industrial production - a signal of forward capacity investment, is now down even more sharply: from -4.4% in November 2018 to -5.5% in December 2018.

16/10/2014: Euro Area Industrial Production Losing Momentum... What Momentum?..

A nice chart from Pictet, graphing industrial production in the US against the Euro area:

Everyone is talking about 'fading momentum' in euro area industrial production... my view: what 'fading momentum'? Euro area industrial output has been on a declining trend for more than 36 months now. The 'recovery' from Q1 2013 through Q1 2014 was a blip - so weak in any 'momentum' it is not worth mentioning.

The chart basically shows no gains on output in the sector for the euro area since 2000-2003 averages. If there was any 'momentum' in the series before the last couple of months, would anyone please point it out?

16/9/2013: More pesky stuff on PMIs v Reality...

Readers of this blog would know that I have been skeptical about the Purchasing Manager Indices capacity to accurately track changes in the economic output, especially during the times of unstable trend or trend shift. The latest on the topic was recently covered here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/09/1092013-pmi-and-real-economy-goldman.html

And here's the handy chart from Pictet neatly highlighting the same problem:

Not being a conspiracy theorist, I would not suggest that latest changes in Markit reporting of PMIs - and in particular dramatic shift away from actually providing broader public and analysts community with some hard numbers and in favour of providing more 'interpretations' of the data plus often unreadable charts has anything to do with the breakdown in PMIs correlations with actual activity... but it would be nice to have more accurate and data-focused releases.

Note: full Pictet note on industrial production in the euro area is here: http://perspectives.pictet.com/2013/09/13/euro-areas-industrial-production-data-back-to-reality/