Italian retail sales rise sequentially in January

Italian retail trade index rose in the month of January after falling in December 2018. On a sequential basis, the Italian retail sales rose 0.5 percent in terms of value and was up 0.6 percent in terms of volume. In the three months to January 2019, value and volume of retail trade rose a bit by 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, showed Istat.

On a year-on-year basis, the Italian retail trade rose 1.3 percent in terms of value and grew 1.5 percent in terms of volume.

Estimates for large scale distribution indicated the strongest growth year-on-year since March 2018, increasing by 2.8 percent. Small scale distribution continued its recent fall. Online sales in the month was up 13.3 percent after a negative 0.3 percent seen in the prior month.

The strongest growth was seen in shoes, leather and travel items and Electric household appliances and audio-video equipment. The largest fall was recorded in Stationary, books, newspapers and magazine (-1.6%) and Pharmaceutical product (-1.2%).

At 16:00 GMT the FxWirePro's Hourly Strength Index of Euro was highly bearish at -109.117, while the FxWirePro's Hourly Strength Index of US Dollar was slightly bullish at 70.6848 more details on FxWirePro's Currency Strength Index, visit http://www.fxwirepro.com/currencyindex