German Consumer Confidence Drops on Geopolitical Risk

German consumer morale fell for the first time in more than 1-1/2 years heading into September as shoppers grew more wary of the impact on Europe’s largest economy of sanctions on Russia and other international conflicts.

Market research group GfK said on Wednesday its forward-looking consumer sentiment indicator, based on a survey of around 2,000 Germans, fell to 8.6 going into September from a downwardly revised 8.9 in August.

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It was the biggest drop in more than three years and below the consensus forecast in a Reuters poll of 30 economists for 9.0, undershooting even the most pessimistic estimate of 8.7. GfK said it was the first decline since January 2013.

“The escalation of the situation in Iraq, Israel and eastern Ukraine as well as the gradually accelerating spiral of sanctions in Russia have now also had a negative impact on the previously extremely optimistic economic outlook of Germans,” GfK analyst Rolf Buerkl said.

via CNBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza