German IFO Business Climate Index rises to 85.5 in February, as expected

• German IFO Business Climate Index rose as expected in February.
• IFO Current Economic Assessment steadied in the reported month.

The headline German IFO Business Climate Index arrived at 85.5 in February, improving from the January print of 85.2 while meeting the market forecast of 85.5.

Meanwhile, the Current Economic Assessment Index stayed unchanged at 86.9 in the reported month, above expectations of 86.7.

The IFO Expectations Index – indicating firms’ projections for the next six months, edged a tad higher to 84.1 in February vs. 83.5 recorded in the previous month and missing the expected 84.0 figure.

Market reaction to the German IFO Survey

EUR/USD is uninspired by the upbeat German IFO survey. At the time of writing, the pair is trading flat at 1.0821.

About German IFO

The headline IFO business climate index was rebased and recalibrated in April after the IFO Research Institute changed the series from the base year of 2000 to the base year of 2005 as of May 2011 and then changed series to include services as of April 2018. The survey now includes 9,000 monthly survey responses from firms in the manufacturing, service sector, trade and construction.