March’s euro-zone retail sales data (released on Wednesday) suggested that overall household spending registered a fairly strong increase in Q1. The 0.8% m/m fall in retail sales brought the annual rate of sales growth down from 2.8% in February to just 1.6%. Despite this, retail sales still registered a fairly healthy expansion of 0.7% in Q1 as a whole. However, the timelier composite PMI (final estimate released on Wednesday) edged down from 54.0 in March to 53.9 in April, implying that the economy might have slowed a touch at the start of Q2.
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