30 December 2014
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sentix Euro Break-up Index News
The sentix Euro Break-up Index (EBI) climbed in December to its highest reading since August 2013. The actual level of 19.9 percent means that about one fifth of all investors expects at least one country to leave the Euro zone in 2015. At it is Greece that investors have in mind for such a "break-up".
Within three months, the sentix Euro Break-up index jumped from 7.7% to 19.9% at the end of the year 2014. One of five investors are no longer convinced that the Euro zone will prevail in its current composition. This is the highest number since August 2013 and almost as high as in the spring of 2013 during the Cyprus banking crisis.
Despite a growing optimism for a Euro area recovery, new worries about Greece emerged. One hundred percent of institutional investors, thinking that at least one country has to leave the Euro, expect Greece to be the candidate! Individual investors are worried as well: 89.6% of the skeptics bet on Greece as the potential exit candidate.
This comes hardly as a surprise because the probability of early general elections has risen in the last weeks and it is questionable if a new government will adhere to the fiscal consolidation course demanded by the "troika".
However, there is also a positive development in the fact that the sentix Contagion Index fell fur-ther. The current reading of 34.3% is the lowest since December 2012. This underlines that the overall stability of the Eurozone may have improved. Investors think of Greece as a precedent – and a single case.
The current sentix Euro Break-up Index reading of 19.9% means that currently this percentage of all surveyed investors expect the euro to break up within the next twelve months. The EBI has reached its high at 73% in July 2012, and touched its low at 7.6% in July 2014. The current poll was conducted from December 23 to December 27, 2014. 822 individual and institutional investors took part in it.
The sentix Euro Break-up Index is published on a monthly basis and was launched in June 2012. The corresponding poll is running for two days around the fourth Friday of each month. Its results are regularly published on the following Tuesday morning. Survey participants may choose up to three euro-zone member states of which they think they will quit the currency union within the next twelve months. Further details can be found on: http://ebr.sentix.de