The minutes of the ECB’s July meeting published on Thursday reflected the central bank’s concern about the strength of the euro, but also a degree of caution regarding continued weak inflation data, analysts say.
José Luis M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) |The ECB believes the net effect of a policy of zero interest rates (negative in the case of the deposit rate) has been positive for the revenues of the different economic players. But the impact has not been equal.
Pablo García Gómez (Carax Alphavalue) |Sector earnings from Europe for the second half of 2017 have been overall solid, with some positive surprises from “heavy cyclicals” like oil and metals and mining.
Kommer van Trigt (Robeco) | The markets are discounting that in the next few months there will be more certainty surrounding the central banks’ normalisation strategy. In its quarterly outlook, Robeco’s Global Fixed Income Macro team says it makes sense for the central banks to begin to normalise their policies.
José Luis M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | The markets are discounting that in the next few months we will see greater certainty in monetary normalisation strategy. The start of the Fed’s balance sheet adjustment can also provide the rest of the central banks with information on the reversion of quantitative measures.
Last week, the ECB’s governing council openly disavowed its chairman by refusing to provide any hint about the potential dismantling of quantitative easing. Draghi was at pains to reconcile this rebuke with his sanguine message in Sintra pointing to a tapering decision shortly after the summer break. In the press conference following the board, he was forced to admit that for the time being inflation run far away from its medium-term goal.
In last years, central banks have managed to give markets any sign about the direction of their policies, neither too dramatic nor excessively inaccurate. Today it is the turn for the ECB to take a further step towards the monetary policy easing in Europe. Experts are divided over the tone of Draghi’s words at the central bank meeting. Some expect he will not change it against the relative surprising hawkish speech in Sintra two weeks ago.
José Luis M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | It’s been balance sheet adjustments and the worsening of the deliquency rate which have been mainly responsible for the deterioration in banking margins over the last few years. It’s important for the ECB to establish a clear strategy for monetary normalisation for the future.
There are various ways of measuring the volatility of equities, but for me the most representative are: a) what is known in the Anglo-Saxon world as the fear index, VIX, and b) the ample range formed by the intra-day movement of an asset price. In other words the difference between the maximum and minimum level of a share price or index within the same day. As Víctor Peiro from GVC Gaesco points, if we look at the performance of this volatility index, both for the US and European indices, we can see we are close to record lows.
We need to analyse what the “inflation triggers” are at the moment, beginning with those related to the domestic environment. In this case, key factors are salaries and what’s happening with prices.