The picture of German demand

April 8, 2009 by admin

With German trade balance numbers released this morning, it’s interesting to note confirmation that contracting trade flows is extending to Europe. With exports in February dropping 300M Euro MoM and 19.5 B Euro YoY, and imports falling by even more. The biggest drops are with EU countries that are NOT Eurozone (i.e. Eastern Europe).

Additionally, both factory order numbers cleanly missed their marks with the MoM numbers doing so by 25%. The EUR/USD didn’t even budge on the news, slightly rising on the release. Combined with upcoming release of production numbers tomorrow, we should have a clearer sense of the aggregate demand story there.