ECB: President Draghi’s speech in focus today - TDS

ECB President Draghi will deliver opening remarks at this year's Sintra conference at 6pm BST and will be a key event for today’s session, according to analysts at TDS.

Key Quotes

“These should be fairly bland, especially compared with the sharp market reaction to his speech last year that drove the EUR and bund yields substantially higher, even starting some chatter of a potential taper tantrum. The key phrase that sparked the hawkish reaction last year was "As the economy continues to recover, a constant policy stance will become more accommodative, and the central bank can accompany the recovery by adjusting the parameters of its policy instruments – not in order to tighten the policy stance, but to keep it broadly unchanged." This is the idea of 'hiking to stand still' that other central bankers have discussed in the past, but markets took it to mean that ECB tightening was imminent.”

“This year though we don't think that there's nearly as much opportunity for missteps after what we think was a pretty clear message at last week's ECB meeting. Markets now have a very clear idea of the path toward the end of QE as well as the timing for the first rate hike, so with policy largely on a preset course until Q3 2019, contingent on macro developments of course, we think that any market reaction to Draghi's comments this year are likely to be muted.”