Italian retail sales remained unchanged sequentially in March

Italian retail sales data for the month of April was released today. The estimates of retail trade in value and volume terms remained the same compared with March 2019. In the three months to April 2019, both value and volume of retail trade remain broadly flat at 0.0 percent 0.1 percent respectively when compared to the previous three months.

On a year-on-year basis, the value of sales rose 4.2 percent, while the quantity sold rose by 4.6 percent. Large scale distribution reported a large spike in retail sales, rising 7.5 percent year-on-year, while small scale distribution rose 0.6 percent. Online sales recorded a year-on-year rise of 17.2 percent.

Looking at the value of sales for non-food products, the strongest growth was reported for computers and telecommunications equipment, cosmetic and toilet articles, while the largest falls concerned shoes, leather goods and travel items and clothing.

At 13:00 GMT the FxWirePro's Hourly Strength Index of Euro was highly bullish at 102.385 while the FxWirePro's Hourly Strength Index of US Dollar was slightly bearish at -74.8761 more details on FxWirePro's Currency Strength Index, visit http://www.fxwirepro.com/currencyindex