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4 Mar 2015
Strong German retail sales suggest a strong start for the economy - DB
FXStreet (Barcelona) - Oliver Rakau, Economist at Deutsche Bank, reviews the German retail sales data, noting that the strong numbers suggest a strong start to the German economy in 2015, supporting the 0.5% qoq Q1 GDP forecast.
Key Quotes
“German real retail sales surprised substantially to the upside in January (+2.9% mom vs. Reuters expectations of a 0.4% increase) with December revised up (+0.6% vs. +0.2% initially). This is the fourth consecutive increase, which only happened four times since 1994, when East and West German retail sales statistics were merged.”
“The annualized growth rate of retail sales stood at 19% over the last four months – the highest since 1994. Compared to January 2014 sales were up 5.3% yoy – the highest rate since June 2010.”
“While there are a couple of – in part temporary – positive factors that likely coincided, these numbers suggest that the German economy is off to a very strong start to the year supporting our recently upward revised Q1 GDP forecast (+0.5% qoq).”
Key Quotes
“German real retail sales surprised substantially to the upside in January (+2.9% mom vs. Reuters expectations of a 0.4% increase) with December revised up (+0.6% vs. +0.2% initially). This is the fourth consecutive increase, which only happened four times since 1994, when East and West German retail sales statistics were merged.”
“The annualized growth rate of retail sales stood at 19% over the last four months – the highest since 1994. Compared to January 2014 sales were up 5.3% yoy – the highest rate since June 2010.”
“While there are a couple of – in part temporary – positive factors that likely coincided, these numbers suggest that the German economy is off to a very strong start to the year supporting our recently upward revised Q1 GDP forecast (+0.5% qoq).”