Leverage fears undermine ‘myth-making’ central banks
With central banks loosening their belts so much comes the risk of policy makers getting caught with their trousers down.
QE
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ECB goes into holding pattern
The European Central Bank decided to stick rather than twist today as it announced the deposit rate has been held at -0.4%, the refinancing rate held at zero, and the details of its €80bn per month quantitative easing programme are unchanged.
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Brexit disrupts ECB QE programme
ECB president Mario Draghi conspicuously avoided the B-word when he held a speech in Portugal last week. This may well be because he has yet to find an answer to the problems the vote has thrown up with regards to the execution of the central bank’s asset purchase programme.
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Was this Draghi’s final bullet?
The ECB’s latest salvo in the fight against the prospect of deflation was initially met positively by markets. But, a lack of a clear message that the Bank will cut rates further from here sent markets falling again almost as quickly.
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Negative rates: central banks play with fire
The Swedish central bank’s surprise announcement that it has pushed interest rates further into negative territory is the latest piece in what is an increasingly worrying puzzle.
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Are we seeing central banks’ last roll of the dice?
Equities markets around the world climbed sharply on news of Japan’s surprise decision to cut interest rates into negative territory.
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Are European equities still the promised land?
As we start 2016 there is at least one thing which is strikingly similar to the same time last year.
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Decoding the ECB ‘disappointment’
ECB President Mario Draghi disappointed markets on Thursday. While the Bank delivered a 10 basis point cut to the deposit rate to an historic -0.3%, and extended the deadline of its asset purchase programme by six months, it kept the main refinancing and marginal lending rates steady at 5 and 30 basis points respectively.
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On the crossroads of migration and investing
People tend to dedicate most of their time to thinking through short-term solutions. While central banks saw QE as the easiest way to provide an imminent boost to their ailing economies, the current migration crisis is just as much a product of short-termist thinking.
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Finnish fund buyers: ECB to ease, Fed must tighten
Fund selectors in Finland are adopting the contradictory stance observed quite frequently these days with investors in Europe: they want the Fed to hike rates at the earliest possible occasion, while they would welcome a move by the ECB to extend its quantitative easing programme.
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Catalan fund buyers ready for QE 2
Fund selectors in Barcelona, who again turned up in large numbers at the semi-annual Expert Investor Barcelona event last week, are yearning for another round of quantitative easing. They expect QE 2 will mainly benefit the equity markets, and they are selling off their bond holdings in unprecedented amounts.
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Buoyant Bavarian fund selectors return to risk-on
We found fund buyers in Munich in an extremely buoyant mood at Expert Investor Germany last week. They expect markets to continue their upward trend for the rest of the year and firmly brush aside any worries about a new market correction.