Stock market as a nowcasting indicator for real investment

The paper proposes a novel method to assess whether real investment can be nowcasted based on information that is available on the stock market. The stock market index on a daily sampling frequency is assessed as a predictor of gross fixed capital formation on a quarterly sampling frequency. For France, Germany, Greece and Spain (four representative countries of eurozone), we find significant empirical evidence that the information from the stock market does produce accurate nowcasting values of gross fixed capital formation.