Are eurozone bond markets warning of a recession as growth slows? - Euronews.com

For most of this year, the story in Europe's bond markets has been about inflation. Prices kept rising, the European Central Bank kept raising interest rates, and investors kept demanding more to lend money to governments. This autumn, a new word may have entered the conversation: recession. Eurostat's Business Cycle Clock – a real-time tracker that maps the phases of an economy – showed the eurozone in a sharp slowdown at the end of the third quarter. Some countries, like Italy, may have already entered a recession, while Germany and France are still facing a downturn. So is the bond market pricing in the start of an economic contraction? When investors expect hard times ahead, they usually do two things.