{"id":438626,"date":"2026-09-23T15:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T08:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/france-pmi-jumps-back-into-expansion-in-september-but-inflation-pressures-complicate-the-ecb-outlook-438626\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T15:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T08:00:08","slug":"france-pmi-jumps-back-into-expansion-in-september-but-inflation-pressures-complicate-the-ecb-outlook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/france-pmi-jumps-back-into-expansion-in-september-but-inflation-pressures-complicate-the-ecb-outlook-438626\/","title":{"rendered":"France PMI jumps back into expansion in September but inflation pressures complicate the ECB outlook"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li>France September flash services PMI 51.4 vs 48.3 expected<\/li>\n<li>Prior 48.0<\/li>\n<li>France September flash manufacturing PMI 50.3 vs 50.9 expected<\/li>\n<li> Prior 51.1<\/li>\n<li>France September flash composite PMI 51.2 vs 48.7 expected<\/li>\n<li>Prior 48.5<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">That is a strong read as French business activity moved back into expansion territory (&gt;50.0) in September, bolstered by a stronger performance in the services sector. Of note, the headline estimate for the services print is the highest in 10 months. That drove the overall expansion to being the quickest in just over two years.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Of note, demand conditions improved and that\u00a0reflected rising sales activity in the<br \/>\nservice sector, although employment continued to decline<br \/>\nand business optimism weakened further.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">New orders\u00a0rose marginally, marking the first improvement in<br \/>\nten months. Meanwhile, exports became less of a drag on overall sales<br \/>\nperformance, as evidenced by the softest contraction in new<br \/>\nforeign business in the year-to-date.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The more important detail for the ECB outlook and for markets though is the read on price pressures.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The report indicated that inflation across France&#8217;s private sector accelerated sharply<br \/>\nat the end of the third quarter. Both input and output prices rose at quicker rates for the first time since May as rising<br \/>\ncost pressures were passed on to clients via charge uplifts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Besides that, fuel price increases were frequently mentioned by panel<br \/>\nmembers as a driving force of inflation, as well as component<br \/>\nprices, energy and metals.<\/p>\n<p>This chart will be one to watch as investors look to assess the pressure point of the ECB ahead of their next policy decision in October:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Markets were pricing in around 45% odds of a 25 bps rate hike by the ECB for October ahead of this data release. That hasn&#8217;t changed by much with those odds sitting at around 47% currently.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The initial reaction seems fairly constrained. However, France has now arguably raised the bar for the PMI readings to follow in terms of any dovish interpretation.\u00a0If the other reports also show firmer demand alongside accelerating prices, October pricing could become considerably more sensitive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\n<p>                            This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>France September flash services PMI 51.4 vs 48.3 expected Prior 48.0 France September flash manufacturing PMI 50.3 vs 50.9 expected Prior 51.1 France September flash composite PMI 51.2 vs 48.7 expected Prior&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}