European Union. Manufacturing PMI. The value of the indicator has decreased from 49 to 48.4

A report on this calendar event is released monthly by the S&P Global.

Business confidence indices are a big group of macroeconomic indicators, showing the current state and the prospects of doing business in the country. These are one of the earliest indicators to assess the economic situation, that’s why their role as leading indicators is especially important.

There are many different indices reflecting the conditions of doing business and manager’s expectations concerning the future: indices of the current conditions — to understand a current sentiment; expectations indices — to forecast the prospects; indices of industry and indices of the service sector; indices of new orders, employment, delivery, prices, etc.

A significant part of business planning is based on this data. The data concerning business confidence are used to forecast the necessary level of stockpiles (both raw material and final product), prices, number of staff, etc.

In general, the necessary budget for proper business functioning is based on the forecast concerning the business confidence.

Comments by the MarketCheese analysts: a decrease of the indicator value may contribute to the fall in quotes of EUR.