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ForennameÖsterreichische Aktien im In- und Ausland
Betreff des ThemasThis will probably be the most upbeat note you will read on Germany this month
URL des Themashttps://aktien-portal.at/forum/../forum/boerse-aktien.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=203844&mesg_id=209652
209652, This will probably be the most upbeat note you will read on Germany this month
Eingetragen von Warren Buffett, 15.4.19 12:22
This will probably be the most upbeat note you will read on Germany this month.

Our view of a return to trend GDP growth in the euro area is certainly not consensus. Far easier to only focus on the weakness of the German manufacturing PMI (44.1) than highlight the acceleration seen in wages (which no one believes anyway) or do any fundamental analysis of the detailed flow of funds and National Account data for the fourth quarter.

The fact of the matter is that German household disposable incomes grew by 3.8% in the year to Q4 2018 (5.2% annualised on the quarter). There have been individual quarters when German household disposable income growth was slightly stronger, but one effectively needs to go back to the bursting of the tech bubble in Q4 2001 to see a similar period of sustained strength in household incomes. To put this in context the German manufacturing PMI was the weakest reading since only July 2012.

2001 was also a year when, expressed a share of disposable incomes, outstanding household debt in Germany was higher than that of the UK and US (strange but true) and followed 2000, a year when non-financial corporations in Germany were running a deficit of 6.2% of GDP. If the German housing market was rolling over we would be more concerned, but this is not what the data tells us, nor what we could see on the ground in Frankfurt last week. Another bias when many commentators talk about the German economy is to only see it through the prism of manufacturing and downplay the importance of the much larger service sector, which is now outperforming again.

The flip-side of the strength of household incomes has been a squeeze on profit margins of German non-financial corporations. Q4 2018 can be seen as something of an outlier, but if the German economy starts to pick-up momentum again, underpinned by a buoyant service sector and, in a world of zero interest rates, a further acceleration in lending, then the direction of travel for profit margins is clear (up).
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