After the jump in headline inflation in March, we are to see that continue in April. Surging energy prices remain the main culprit as households and businesses have to deal with the fallout from the Middle East conflict.
As mentioned before, the price increase that your every day consumer and business have to deal with is very different to what we see on our screens in markets. The latter is prices for futures contracts while the former is what people are actually needing to pay at the pump and/or to secure oil and gas shipments. And there is a massive premium still for physical oil barrels especially.
In turn, that is translating to price hikes and a squeeze on households while businesses are dealing with a surge in input cost inflation. Tough times.
And with the Strait of Hormuz staying closed and the war set to extend to ten weeks soon enough, the toll that is being paid continues to mount exponentially.
For Germany, headline annual inflation is expected to climb further to 3.0% in April. That will mark the highest reading since December 2023.
As for core annual inflation, that was seen at 2.5% in March and keeping steadier last month. That was only the case because the first hit is from energy prices, which are excluded from the reading. But as cost push inflation translates more strongly to broader goods categories, expect that to eventually feed to core prices too
