"The euro zone is this month's winner! Investors are perceiving a further improvement in the troubled single currency bloc in February."
Sebastian Wanke, senior analyst at Sentix
A bunch of negative data came out on February 10 from the biggest European economies, namely France and Italy. On a monthly basis, industrial production in those countries witnessed a slowdown in performance and missed economists projections, official data showed on Monday. Italy's industrial output fell as much as 0.9% in December, compared to the 0.3% increase seen a month earlier. On an annual basis, industrial production in the Eurozone's third biggest economy slowed 0.7% in December after a revised 1.5% growth posted in the previous month. France also disappointed economists by posting a decline in industrial manufacturing by 0.3% in the final month of 2013, compared with a robust 1.2% gain a month earlier.
Also, the Bank of France said that the Eurozone's number two economy will grow at a slower pace in the first quarter compared with the previous three-month period. It is projected that France will expand at 0.2% in the Q1 after the 0.5% quarter on quarter expansion the central bank predicted in its previous poll for the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, the Eurozone Sentix index surprisingly rose in February, reaching the highest level since April 2011 as investors became more optimistic about conditions in the currency bloc. The index jumped to 13.3 in February up from 11.9 a month earlier, beating economists expectations for a decline to 10.7.
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