ECB review: Not a 'significant' meeting

Danske Research Team Danske Bank A/S

he ECB meeting concluded today was not a 'significant' meeting, with no new signals leaving many decisions for the June meeting. Near term growth outlook was 'titled to the downside' while the medium term growth risk was 'broadly balanced'. The latter has paved the way for a lower PEPP volume to be agreed at the June meeting.

Regarding the PEPP implementation, there are still a number of outstanding questions. While Lagarde emphasised we should not focus on the weekly figure, but rather on the monthly figures, it remains unclear if the increase we have seen (when corrected for trading days) is the full amount of 'significantly'. We expect so and do not expect higher volume.

Rates traded in a tight range through the press conference. Initially a minor sell-off on the back of the 16 March comment of significantly higher volume which was reversed as Lagarde said that ECB and Fed are 'not on the same page'.

On the EUR/USD, this notion of the regional differences between the Fed and the ECB sent EUR/USD lower. Despite general global optimism, in an FX perspective it is not necessary to see ECB as a laggard to Fed. EUR/USD fell 30pips from today's highs to around 1.2030.

Author

Danske Research Team

Danske Bank A/S

Research is part of Danske Bank Markets and operate as Danske Bank's research department. The department monitors financial markets and economic trends of relevance to Danske Bank Markets and its clients.

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