Investor confidence is continuing to grow in the Eurozone, research published on Monday confirmed, boosted by the worldwide rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine.
The headline Sentix Economic Index for the Eurozone was 5.0 in March, a significant jump on February’s -0.2 and the highest since February 2020. Analysts had been looking for a reading closer to 1.4.
The expectations index was 32.5, marginally higher than the previous month’s 31.5, while the index for the current situation hit a year-high of -19.3.
Sentix said that lockdown restrictions, which remain in place across a number of Eurozone countries, had only had a minor impact on the indices.
“The hope of investors is that this recovery path will continue,” it noted. “The pandemic seems to have peaked at the global level and vaccination is also progressing well in that the number of immunised individuals is increasing, and statistics suggest that effective vaccination protection is being achieved.
“These trends allow for a faster opening of the economy; this is what investors are betting on.”
In Germany, the Eurozone’s largest economy, the overall index was 11.9, the highest since November 2018, although the expectations index was unchanged at 35.8.
The improved optimism was also see outside of the Eurozone, with the Sentix global aggregate index hitting 20.5 in March, the eleventh increase in a row and the highest since March 2018.
Manfred Hübner, Sentix managing director, said: “The improvements are evident in virtually in all regions of the world. It is essentially the situation scores that are improving significantly everywhere, indicating that the global economy is emerging from the recession caused by the corona pandemic.”
Claus Vistesen, chief Eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said of the Eurozone indices: “The headline pushed higher to within a whisker of the post-virus high, and the details were robust too.
“In total, these data continue to reflect the reality that financial markets are largely living in a world without the virus, despite the fact that the near-term outlook remains difficult.
“Unless news emerges that the most widely-used vaccines fall short in the battle against new strains – so far they have been very resilient – we suspect this story remain.”
