- Annalisa Piazza, a strategist at Newedge Group
German business confidence declined for the first time since August, as the eurozone's debt crisis weighed on Europe's largest economy. The report, made by the ZEW Center for European Economic Research, showed that economic sentiment fell to -15.7, down from -11.5 in October, while analysts had predicted the index to improve by 1.7 points in November. At the same time, the gauge of current economic conditions in the country tumbled to 5.4 compared to 10 in October, reaching the lowest level since June 2010.
"In a nutshell, the ZEW survey started to incorporate the bad news coming from the German economy," said Annalisa Piazza, a strategist at Newedge Group in London. "We don't expect the German economy to collapse anytime soon, but weakness is certainly likely to prevail in the second half of 2012."
"With the European Central Bank yet to purchase any bonds and worries about Greece escalating again, investors seem to be losing what little faith they had regained," said Jennifer McKeown, senior European economist at Capital Economics.
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index added 0.40 per cent to 270.60. Germany's DAX Index rose 0.01 per cent to 7,169.12, while France's CAC 40 Index jumped 0.56 per cent to 3,430.60.
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