The Markit retail PMI’s were out a little earlier and fell again. The PMI’s are a month ahead of the main retail data and are a decent proxy for those numbers.
We saw Dec EZ retail sales drop yesterday to 0.3% from 0.7% and today’s Markit retail PMI for Jan fell to 46.6 from 47.6
Eurozone retail PMI vs retail sales 05 02 2015
That suggests Jan sales in the eurozone aren’t going to be breaking any records.
Germany, France and Italy also released PMI’s and the only one to gain was Germany;
- Italy 41.2 vs 42.8 prior
- Germany 52.3 vs 51.7 prior
- France 44.0 vs 46.5 prior
Germany is the only one of the three in expansion and the size of the falls in the others aren’t encouraging.
Unfortunately retail sales aren’t the biggest market moving numbers at the moment so the PMI aren’t really tradable on the main data. If we see a big pick up in them then that might give us a little opportunity, so we’ll keep an eye on them going forward.
