Chart of the Day - European Car Sales and Consumer Confidence

"Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence." - Vince Lombardi

As we posited in our conversation "The Regret Theory" back in December 2012, in relation to European Consumption, Consumer Confidence is key (in continuation to our extensive look at car sales in Europe from our conversation of April 2012 - "The European Clunker - European car sales, a clear indicator of deflation"):

"One could also look at car sales and European Consumer confidence since 2007, the relationship seems pretty clear even though the cash for clunkers program have indeed been highly supportive of car sales whenever consumer confidence needed some government "artificial boost"

Strong macro drivers such as consumer confidence set the trends for the demand in the auto sector but for consumption levels as well as per the below Chart of the Day - graph source Bloomberg:

New car registrations in Western Europe have continued their positive trend in conjunction with European Consumer Confidence:
-UK +8.2%
-France +5.8%
-Spain +28.7%
-Italy +1.9%
-Germany -3.4% (slightly off this month)

European's five largest markets for passenger car sales have generated 817,158 units sale, up 4.1% from a year ago. The big winner has been Renault group reporting double-digit growth in sale in Spain (+43.3%) driven by the domestic market France with 18.4% growth according to CreditSights from their European Morning comment of the 8th of May.

"If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started." - Marcus Tullius Cicero

Stay tuned!