Overall business confidence declined in October. At 93.4, the Istat gauge was down from the revised 95.6 in September.

Moreover, this gain was not mirrored in manufacturing where confidence dipped from a revised 86.7 to 85.8, its weakest point in 2024. However, construction gained ground (from 101.9 to 103.9), and retail trade also (from 102.3 to 103.7). Services on the other hand fell (from 100.4 to 95.3) mainly due to strong pessimism about the current business trend and the order book volume, both of which fell sharply this month.

Consumer confidence fell (from 98.3 to 97.4), mainly due to drops from the economic and future climate index.

In summary, the report points to the shrinking of both business and consumer activity. Today's update leaves the Italian RPI at minus 11 and the RPI-P at minus 19, both measures showing economic activity in general falling short of market expectations.

The Italian statistics office (Istat) conducts business and consumer confidence surveys over the first fifteen and ten working days of each reference month respectively. These provide information about current and expected developments in key sector variables. The largely qualitative results are synthesized for each survey into a single number that provides an overall measure of sentiment. Business confidence reflects the combined results of separate surveys covering manufacturing, retail, construction and services.

If investors want to know how the business or consumer sectors are performing as they evaluate their investment decisions, they can find timely and in depth information in the latest Istat surveys. Although short-term swings can be erratic, changes in trends in confidence can contain very useful information about a sector’s underlying health well in advance of the release of the official data. Moreover, by including some forward-looking components (e.g. manufacturing orders or consumer buying intentions) the Istat surveys can also provide a potential insight into prospective developments.