German Consumer climate: Brexit and terror threat dampen consumer confidence - GfK

Overall, consumer sentiment in Germany weakened slightly in September. The overall consumer climate index is forecasting 10.0 points for October, following 10.2 points in September. Both economic and income expectations, as well as propensity to buy suffer losses.

It would seem that German citizens believe that their country's economy is set to develop more weakly over the next few months. This is signaled by the third successive drop in economic expectations. Although the income expectations and propensity to buy indicators also recorded losses this month, they remain at an extremely high level.

Economic expectations suffer third consecutive decline

It appears that consumers feel the German economy will develop somewhat more moderately in the coming months. The indicator fell by 1.8 points in September to 6.8 points. This marks the third decline in a row. Despite these losses, economic expectations remain clearly above zero, in other words, above their long-term average of 0 points.

It looks as if the Brexit decision from June has now started to have an impact. In the three months since the referendum, economic expectations have continuously fallen. The announcement that Great Britain will leave the EU has caused uncertainty to rise. This has also led to the Ifo Business Climate Index falling in July and August.