Annalisa Piazza (MFS Investment Management) | The ECB hiked policy rates by 50bp and pre-committed to hike by another 50bp in March. The depo rate now stands at 2.50%. Looking ahead, the ECB is widely committed to keep rates in restrictive territory to reach the inflation target in the medium term. The overall communication by the ECB remains relatively hawkish as the policy stance remains restrictive. That said, the market…
Germán García Mellado (A&G) | Regarding interest rates, we expect a 50 basis point rise for Thursday’s meeting, placing the deposit facility at 2%. We do not believe that Lagarde will specify the steps to be taken for the first meetings in 2023 or detail the terminal rate of this cycle of rate hikes. She will therefore maintain a stance similar to that shown since the post-summer meetings, in which…
Today the European Central Bank will meet again under pressure by the new wave of Covid-19 contagion in the Eurozone. In addition, latest inflation data have been disappointing. Will it announce new measures at this meeting? will it remain in standby mode?
On Thursday September 10, the ECB will meet and present its updated macroeconomic table, which will give us a better idea of its expectations regarding the pace of economic recovery (the August PMIs showed signs of weakness after the strong rebound from the April lows). The central bank will also update its view on current and future inflation levels with data once again showing very contained prices and in a context where the Fed is willing to tolerate inflation above 2% to obtain this figure as an average.
The ECB meeting this week should be a non-event, but risks are for a hawkish surprise in tone. We will be all ears on two elements: the timeline and the motivation for the review that starts this week and finishes before the end of 2020.
Olivia Álvarez (Monex Europe) | The ECB will host its first 2020 monetary policy meeting next Thursday 23rd. The event is unlikely to bring any changes over policy tools after the accommodative package introduced in September, but rather, it could turn the attention towards any changes in the economic outlook facing the Eurozone and the strategic review vowed by new chief Christine Lagarde.
The ECB’s chairman endorsed the optimistic staff forecast enough to justify the end of QE for December 2018 and then spent the rest of the press conference insisting on the downside risks. This was the only way that BoAML’ s analysts find to deliver what they think about Mario Draghi’s main challenge: making sure that there would not be any continuum in the market perceptions between the end of the net purchases and a brisk pace of normalisation on rates.
The ECB could announce a short taper to December current week. The central bank has to be consistent if QE is ending this year and, hence, according to BoAML’s analysts it has to send a reaffirming message on three criteria: convergence, confidence, resilience.
The ECB is expected to announce a reduction, or tapering, of its asset purchasing programme at today’s council meeting. In opinion of David Kohl, chief currency strategist at Julius Baer, “financial markets are well prepared for less support from monetary policy.”
The surprisingly low annual eurozone inflation reading for March at 1.5% will finally end speculation about an earlier end to the negative deposit rate in today’s ECB’s governing council meeting, as reported by Julius Bär’s experts. Both ECB Chief Economist Peter Praet and ECB President Mario Draghi have already made clear in recent weeks that interest rates will not rise before the ECB’s asset-purchasing programme comes to an end.