Renewed confidence? What real time indicators say #12

Despite an increasingly visible resurgence of the epidemic we talked about last week , household and business confidence appears to be recovering and going hand in hand with an improved economic prospects. Some activity indicators, such as PMIs , show levels above pre-crisis levels in the majority of European countries. This week, we chose to look at different high-frequency data in order to analyze the state of economic and health confidence of households and businesses: We analyze the latest French data on the business climate and household confidence : after reaching a low of 53.4 in April, the business climate in France has risen sharply, to 84.7 according to INSEE. The employment component was 76.8 in July. The concern of European households about the risk of a second wave is present because of the acceleration in the number of cases worldwide . This is illustrated by recent public opinion polls as well as Google Trends searches which remain on a relative high level in some countries . Research for real estate sales in Europe shows that households are more interested after the lockdown period in houses , especially for homes in the South (doubling of research) and in the outskirts of large agglomerations (+132.5% on last week for house searches in Seine-et-Marne , annual growth).