It is hard to recall, after the downpour over the long bank holiday weekend, that May was glorious as far as the weather was concerned. We include the sunshine anomaly as one of the components of our confidence index on the pretext that the sunshine lifts our spirits - and makes us more predisposed to optimism about matters financial.
| Month | Score |
| March | -23 |
| April | -33 |
| May | -28 |
Half of our factors are registering a -5 score and, of the remainder, only the retail prices index factor is in the positive. There needs to be a dramatic improvement in the economic indicators before our overall index can return to 2006 levels, when the index was positive, or March 2004 when it peaked at +13.
Amid all the noise and doom and gloom coming out of Europe there was one indicator that quietly increased and that was the factor for house prices. Nationally, house prices increased by 0.2 per cent during May - the headline figure was boosted by London which grew by 0.6 per cent. According to Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack: "The improvement in market conditions over recent months has resulted in rising levels of supply coming to the market as sellers look to take advantage of strengthening market indicators".
