Germany: Early Bird in slow descent

In February, the Early Bird again dropped a bit from 0.48 to 0.43 points.
 
It's true that the euro suffered further significant losses and the German economy's index of price competitiveness - the real external value of a fictitious D-Mark - is now trading more than 5% lower than one year ago. 

However, the world economy is struggling at the same time.

After all, most of the purchasing managers' indices for manufacturing, which we use as a proxy for the world economy, dropped again in February, thus more than offsetting the positive effect of the weaker euro in the calculation of our leading indicator.

Commerzbank notes in a report on Monday:

• While the Early Bird's slight downtrend in place since autumn certainly does not signal another downswing of the economy yet, it does caution that the economic optimism currently prevailing on the market should not be exaggerated.