Latest data released by Destatis - 31 January 2019
- Prior +1.4%; revised to +1.6%
- Retail sales -2.1% vs +1.5% y/y expected
- Prior +1.1%; revised to +1.9%
Slight delay in the release by the source. Those are some pretty horrendous numbers coming out of Germany. That's the biggest monthly drop in retail sales since May 2007, mind you. I wonder whether or not this has anything to do with any Black Friday crossover period but (actually it shouldn't, kind to think about it) if anything it suggests that German consumption isn't as reliable/strong as one may have hoped for it to be.
The poor figures here isn't really impacting the euro with EUR/USD still hovering around 1.1500 and EUR/GBP trading rather flat at 0.8759 on the day. But expect this to feed into German economic sentiment and we may see local authorities come out to defend the data here.
