Eurozone economic confidence continued its upward trend in November, survey results from the European Commission showed Thursday. Driven by the improvement services and industry, the economic confidence index rose to 98.5 from 97.7 in the prior month. The reading was also above the consensus level of 98. Confidence in industry rose to -3.9 from -5 in October. The increase of 1.1 points in industry confidence resulted mainly from an important improvement in managers' assessment of the current level of overall order books, data showed. At -0.8, services confidence registered a strong increase of 2.9 points, resulting from far better assessments of past demand and the past business situation. Meanwhile, consumer confidence declined 0.9 to -15.4 in November, putting a halt to the upward trend observed since December 2012. Retail trade confidence remained broadly unchanged at -7.7, resulting from an important improvement in managers' business expectations, which was offset by worsening views on the volume of stocks. Another report showed that the business confidence index rose for the seventh successive month in November, turning positive for the first time since March 2012. The index came in at 0.18 compared to -0.08 in October.

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