The Corner | March 11, 2015 | The euro sinked to 12-year lows on Wednesday due to the ECB’s money printing –which is pushing yields down (German 30-year government bonds are now lower than those on U.S. two-year paper), and increasing expectations of a rates hike on the other side of the Atlantic. ECB’s Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny insisted that negative bond yields in the euro area probably won’t remain for long.
MADRID | March 10, 2015 | By Luis Arroyo | Six years after the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England launched their QE programmes, the ECB proceeded on Monday. Will Mario Draghi at least have the same partial success as his peers? That is, being able to slowly revive the economy and restore hope that the situation is getting back on track. In the graph above, see how five EZ governments are already borrowing at super low rates.
The Corner | March 10, 2015 | Sovereign bonds will not have anything to offer soon, and corporate debt becoming the biggest beneficiary: IRR also will reduce significantly, although we won’t see negative nor zero levels, Bankinter analysts point out.
The Corner | March 10, 2015 | Markets will need to get used to the Greek conundrum, experts at Link Securities commented, that is why euro area bonds are going to look more attractive than stock in today’s session. (Picture by Álex García.)
The Corner | March 9, 2015 | Peripheral bonds hit minimum lows on Monday as the ECB and the 19 national central banks started the much-awaited sovereign puchases on Monday. Short-term eurozone interest rates are expected to move deeper into negative territory as the QE unfolds. “This programme will mean a safety net for the eurozone equities and bond markets. However, we might see some corrections,” experts at Link Securities commented. Liquidity injected in the system “will first push bond prices up, but almost simultaneously will move towards equities,” Bankinter analysts noted.
LONDON | March 6, 2015 | By Sigrún Davídsdóttir | Both in Cyprus and Iceland foreign funds flowed into the islands, in the end forcing the government to make use of extreme measures when the tide turned. These measures are normally called ‘capital controls’ which in these two cases hides the fact that the measures used are fundamentally different in all but name. In Iceland, the controls contain the effect of lacking foreign currency, effectively a balance of payment problem – in Cyprus, the controls were a way of defending banks against bank run, i.e. preventing depositors to move funds freely.
MADRID | February 27, 2015 | J.J Fernandez-Figares| Link Securities | Efforts by the ECB to inject money into the euro zone are already showing signs of impact as positive M3 figures offer encouragement ahead of March purchases of sovereign bonds.
MADRID | February 27th, | The Corner | Negative inflation is likely to be of more concern to German policy makers than it is to their Spanish counterparts today, with low prices being seen as good news for Spanish consumers and the economy as a whole. Elsewhere, attention will focus on Greek GDP, with the possibility that the latest data may underline some of the lingering difficulties between Greece and its EU partners.
MADRID | The Corner | February 25, 2015 | Spanish telecom giant Telefonica reported a drop of 34.7% in net profit, although investors celebrated revenue picture brightening up. Elsewhere, the Spanish Producer Price Index falls again, registering a drop of 2.8% for January.
MADRID | February 24, 2015 | By Carlos Díaz Güell | Spanish banks’ NPLs rate went down by 1.1% in 2014 standing at 12.5% thanks to the sharp fall of the delinquency rate (12.5% year on year) that offset the impact of banks’ reducing their lending activity. In fact, if lending had remained stable in 2014 (it went down by -4.6%), the default rate would have been of 11%.