Back on Wall Street, Alphabet investors have singed fingers after watching the stock plunge over 8%.

More than $70bn has been wiped off its value, in the biggest one-day drop since 2012.

In other corporate news, General Electric has cheered Wall Street with results which could have been worse....

CNN explains:

General Electric has fallen so hard that Wall Street is relieved its industrial businesses only burned $1.2 billion of cash during the first quarter.

Shares of GE(GE) climbed 7% in premarket trading on Tuesday after the company reported profit and revenue that exceeded forecasts. Wall Street is betting the company’s recovery remains intact.

GE’s struggles continue to be driven by its slumping power division. Profit tumbled 71% in that unit as orders nosedived.

Yet GE is standing by its 2019 guidance for industrial free cash flow to range between negative $2 billion and zero.

Ouch! Shares in Alphabet have taken a mighty tumble at the start of trading in New York.

Google’s parent company has dropped by 8%, it’s worst stumble since 2012, after it reported a 30% drop in net income last night.

Investors are also concerned that revenue growth slowed to 16.7%, suggesting Alphabet is facing tough competition in the advertising space.

Meanwhile in America, house price growth has hit its lowest rate in around seven years - perhaps a sign that recent interest rate hikes have cooled the market.

Canada’s February contraction confirms that the country’s growth outlook is bleak, says Simon Harvey, FX market analyst at Monex Europe.

He points out that Canada’s mining sector is struggling:

“The sixth consecutive decline in the natural resources sector evidences that the spill over effects from the rout in Q4 2018 are yet to fade.

Mining output declined by 4.4% in February while oil & gas extraction fell 0.6%, but February may show the end of the decline as investment is expected to increase amid firming commodity prices.

Newsflash: Mexico’s economy has also suffered a contraction.

Mexican GDP fell by 0.2% in the last quarter, dashing hopes of a 0.3% expansion and putting it half-way towards a recession. More details here.

Newsflash: Canada’s economy has weakened, bucking the stronger data out of Europe today.

Canadian GDP fell by 0.1% in February, new figures show, following a 0.3% expanse in January. The goods-producing sector and the services sector both contracted, Statistics Canada says, with mining also weakening.

Analysts had expected GDP to be flat month-on-month in February, so this suggests the economy is struggling more than expected.

Ana Andrade, research analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, reckons the eurozone economy still needs support - so don’t expect the European Central Bank to raise interest rates anytime soon!

She writes:

At the ECB’s last meeting Mario Draghi showed that the bank’s toolkit could be adjusted to tackle a potential severe economic downturn. The ECB signalled it was ready to go “low for longer” or even further cut rates if the euro zone headed into a recession. If the flash estimate for Q1 is confirmed at 0.4% there should be no need for this.

Nevertheless, we continue to expect TLTROs [new cheap loans to banks] in very favourable terms and no hike this year as inflationary pressures remain low.

PwC have helpfully drawn up this chart, showing how Spain has posted a strong recovery since the debt crisis, but Greece has really struggled:

Here’s Barret Kupelian, senior economist at PwC, on today’s growth data:

The national breakdown of the data showed the Italian economy grew in the first quarter of this year putting an end to its 6th recession in the 21st century. For France, even though output expanded by a respectable 0.3% on a quarter-on-quarter basis it was less strong than expected. However, we expect the recent tax cuts announced by the French authorities to sustain demand in the short-term, assuming households continue to spend rather than save.

Finally, Spain continued to defy expectations growing at a rate of 0.7% quarter-on-quarter in line with its post Eurozone crisis average rate. The figure below shows that Spain’s GDP in level terms is now around 16% higher compared to the low it struck during the Eurozone crisis. This is the second best performance when compared to other peripheral economies, with sunny Cyprus managing to outperform others growing its economy by about 18%.

Does today’s data herald the beginning of a synchronised upswing in Eurozone GDP growth? It is probably too soon to tell with one quarter’s worth of data but Eurozone policymakers will be watching whether the momentum continues in the next few quarters.

Nancy Curtin, CIO at Close Brothers Asset Management, strikes a cautious note -- Europe’s economy is improving, but it’s hardly booming.

“Eurozone GDP figures may have provided a positive surprise for investors, but its economy is far from out of the woods. In reality, growth is still pretty anaemic, and the Eurozone’s export-led economy remains vulnerable to any global slowdown. But things are looking up; Chinese stimulus should turn into a tail wind for the region, supporting positive trends in wage growth and employment.

Should economic growth run out of steam once more, rather than picking up speed, a fiscal intervention or further monetary policy changes may be deemed necessary.“

Italy’s farms, factories and service sector companies all made a positive contribution to growth in the last quarter, Istat says.

Net exports also boosted growth, which is an encouraging signal.

However, company inventories dragged back domestic growth (implying that firms ran down their stockpiles of goods).

Newsflash: Italy has escaped recession! More to follow....

Europe’s economy has been through some tough times recently, thanks to Brexit, the US-China trade war, political clashes between Italy and Brussels, and a downturn in Germany’s factory sector (particularly auto markets).

But today’s data suggests the eurozone will avoid being dragged into recession, as some feared.

Dan O’Brien, chief economist at the Institute of International and European Affairs, reckons the region is emerging from a soft patch.

Germany’s growth report won’t be issued for a couple of weeks. But today’s date implies that Europe’s largest economy has posted solid growth in the last quarter - perhaps 0.4%, or even faster?

The euro has risen to its highest level in nearly a week, on the back of today’s jobs and growth figures.

The single currency has gained a third of a cent to $1.122, as investors conclude that the eurozone is stronger than thought.

Unemployment across the wider European Union has fallen to 6.4% -- the lowest since Eurostat started keeping data in January 2000.

The statistics body says that almost one and a half million people stopped being unemployed in the last year:

Eurostat estimates that 15.907 million men and women in the EU28, of whom 12.630 million in the euro area, were unemployed in March 2019. Compared with February 2019, the number of persons unemployed decreased by 172 000 in the EU28 and by 174 000 in the euro area.

Compared with March 2018, unemployment fell by 1.430 million in the EU28 and by 1.172 million in the euro area.

European policymakers will like the look of this chart - showing how growth is rising again after some tough quarters.

On an annual basis, the eurozone grew by 1.2% in the last year while the EU grew by 1.5%.

The wider European Union also accelerated in the last quarter.

The EU grew by 0.5% in January-March, new figures from Eurostat show, up from 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2018.

European stock markets are bobbing rather aimlessly today, despite the pick-up in growth in Spain.

The French, German and UK markets are all slightly in the red, as the slowdown in China’s factory growth overnight dampens the mood. Last night’s underwhelming results from Alphabet is also weighing on shares.

We don’t get any German growth data today, unfortunately. Instead, Europe’s largest economy has just posted a big fall in unemployment.

The number of people out of work in Germany shrank by 12,000 this month to 2.22 million, the Federal Statistics Body reports. That’s much better than the 5,000 reduction expected by economists.

The jobless rate held steady at 4.9%, the lowest since reunification in 1989.

Germany’s economy has weakened in recent months - with no growth in the second half of 2018, and a painful contraction in its factory sector. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to be triggering a rise in joblessness.

Austria’s growth rate has dipped, to 0.3% in January-March from 0.4% in October-December 2018.

Although household spending and business investment rose, trade growth weakened -- a problem also suffered by France of course.

Inga Fechner of ING explains:

While household and public consumption expenditure held up nicely, each rising by 0.4% quarter-on-quarter, exports and imports lost momentum. The cooling world economy and especially the cooling of the European industrial economy has started to leave its mark on Austria.

Although imports rose moderately (+0.4%) in line with investment demand, exports expanded to the same extent, resulting in hardly any contribution to GDP growth in the first quarter.

Bloomberg is also cheered by the jump in Spain’s growth rate, calling it an encouraging sign for European growth.

Spain’s economy unexpectedly picked up pace, adding to signs that a slowdown in the euro area may be on the verge of turning.

Spain has consistently outgrown the 19-country region since the start of 2018 and expanded 0.7 percent in the first quarter. A gradual fall in unemployment and higher wages have given a sustained boost to consumer spending, a motor of the Spanish economy, offsetting weaker export demand.

More here: Spanish Economic Growth Exceeds Estimates at Start of 2019

Getting back to the growth figures...and this chart shows how Spain’s economy has now been steadily growing since 2014:

UK hotel chain Whitbread is also under pressure this morning, after warning the Brexit uncertainty is hurting its Premier Inn business.

Alison Brittain, Whitbread’s CEO, warned that there are ongoing signs of market weakness across both business and leisure, especially in the UK regions.

That suggests both consumers and companies have been cutting back on travel, while they watched the political crisis in Westminster unfold.

She told shareholders:

In the fourth quarter, we saw a decline in business and leisure confidence, leading to weaker domestic hotel demand. This weakness has increased into March and April particularly in the regional business market, coinciding with an acute period of political and economic uncertainty in the UK. At this stage in the new financial year it is too early to know how business confidence and its impact on the market will evolve.

Statutory profits at the group, which sold its Costa Coffee business to Coca-Cola for £3.9bn in January, shrank by 40% in the last year. Shares have dropped by 2.6% in early trading.

In the City, shares of mining companies have fallen after China’s factory growth unexpectedly stalled last month (see 7.34am).

Coal and iron ore giant Glencore are the biggest faller, down 3%, with BHP Group and Rio Tinto both shedding 1.5%.

But that’s balanced out by Standard Chartered; up 4% after announcing a $1bn share buyback earlier today.

The pick-up in Spain’s growth rate is a positive signal for Europe’s economy, say financial analysts.

Here’s Simon Harvey of Monex Europe:

This is from currency analyst Marc-André Fongern:

And here’s Michael Brown of Caxton.

Although any growth is welcome, a 0.3% quarterly growth rate is rather mediocre.

And as Philippe Waechter, chief economist at Ostrum Asset Management points out, French GDP has now been subdued for over a year.

Some snap reaction:

This chart illustrates how the halt in French export growth dragged its economy back in the last quarter (the green bar).

The red bar is also significant - that’s companies swelling their inventories.

More encouragingly, French household spending grew by 0.4% in the last quarter (having flatlined in October-December). That suggests that consumer confidence might be picking up.

French businesses also kept investing in new equipment and facilities -- this ‘gross fixed capital formation’ rose by 0.3% (down slightly on the previous quarter).

This means that domestic demand made a positive boost to France’s economy.