A Look At This Week’s “Other” Big Event

With the Italian referendum now in the rearview mirror, the market’s attention focuses on this Thursday’s second most important event, the ECB meeting on Thursday. Here the biggest question is whether, alongside the now widely expected extension of the ECB’s QE which is set to mature in March 2017, and which most analysts believe will be prolonged until at least September 2017, Mario Draghi will also announce some form of tightening or tapering of QE purchases or an eventual formal ending of its asset purchases, as Reuters hinted in a trial balloon report last week.
As readers will recall, on December 1 Reuters reported that in advance of its March 2017 meeting, the ECB was considering sending a “formal signal after its policy meeting next Thursday that the program will eventually end.” It added that skeptics of more stimulus on the bank’s Governing Council “have accepted that an extension beyond the current expiry date of March is inevitable given weak underlying inflation and heightened political risk.”
The question remains how to structure that extension. According to report, much of the preparatory staff work had focused on a six-month extension at a steady pace of 80 billion euros per month, an option favored by many as growth is sluggish, inflation lacks momentum and political risk from key elections keeps the chances of market volatility high, three sources said. But some have indicated they would favor an extension at lower volumes, for example nine months at 60 billion euros a month, fearing that a straight extension could make the program appear open-ended, two of the sources said.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 5, 2016.