020 7898 0500The euro made slight gains against the US dollar on Monday but had little to do with its own strength, instead benefitting from the release of disappointing US manufacturing and consumer spending data. Very little happened between sterling and the euro and it remained slightly in sterling’s favour.
There was, however, interesting news from Greece, where the stock exchange opened for the first time in five weeks and fell 23% once open, before recovering ever so slightly with banking shares being hit the hardest and loosing up to 30%. With Greek banks making up around 20% of the Greece index, this really hit the stock exchange the hardest, whilst Greek manufacturing also fell to record lows. At 52.4 the Eurozone Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data overall was slightly better than the forecast of 52.2, with Germany, Italy and Spain all expanding their output last month.
Today we have inflation data in the form of the Producer Price Index (PPI) out for Europe, which is expected to remain at 0% – the same as last month. Any surprises could have the potential to erase the Eurozone’s slight gains.
