DMV-ifo Marketing Barometer January 2018

Clouded Business Climate

The Christmas mood in the marketing sector could not be maintained in January. Even though the business expectations were more optimistic than in the previous month, respondents rated the current business conditions as more unfavorable - its indicator declined by 8.4 points. This decrease caused the Business Climate Index to fall to 104.1 points. In contrast, the Business Climate Index for the whole German economy rose to 117.6 points, reaching again the record high of November 2017.

The ifo Business Climate is based on approximately 7,000 monthly survey responses from firms in manufacturing, construction, wholesaling and retailing. The firms are asked to give their assessments of the current business situation and their expectations for the next six months. They can characterize their situation as "good", "satisfactory" or "poor" and their business expectations for the next six months as "more favorable", "unchanged" or "more unfavorable". The balance value of the current business situation is the difference between the percentages of the responses "good" and "poor"; the balance value of the expectations is the difference between the percentages of the responses "more favorable" and "more unfavorable". The business climate is a transformed mean of the balances of the business situation and the expectations. Since January 2015, the X-13ARIMA-SEATS seasonal adjustment is used in the calculation of the results series of the ifo Business Survey. For the purpose of calculating the index values, the transformed balances are all normalized to the average of the year 2005.

The whole evaluation you find here. (only available in German)

Link to previous evaluations.