The curious case of the recent slip in Eurozone economic data points
It's something that was highlighted last week here and yesterday as well. The recent down tick in Eurozone data compared to expectations and peak readings in December/January may start to be a cause for concern for the ECB.
Danske (Piet Christiansen) and ING (Bert Coljin) economists are already saying that recent data will push the ECB to maintain a dovish tone, with the former even suggesting that the ECB may hold off on key policy announcements until a later point than currently expected.
While the data points are still relatively decent - they are sitting above the five-year average for example in the case of PMI readings - the slow start to the year is something hard to ignore, and a puzzling one for many economists.
There's a myriad of factors that could have played a part in that but here's just some to wrap your head around - as compiled by Bloomberg:
