Market Reaction To The ECB Announcement

The ECB rolled out the big guns today but stopped short of an all-out quantitative easing. In addition to the TLTRO, there will be ABS and mortgage bond purchases. However these markets are relatively small in Europe – particularly the higher rated paper that would qualify for the ECB purchases.

The deposit rate on bank excess reserves was set to -20bp. With Germany continuing to resist full QE, Draghi’s best two options are to try stimulating consumer and business credit (via ABS purchases and TLTRO) as well as to push down the euro (via negative deposit rates). So we got a “bazooka lite”.

The euro took the biggest single-day hit in over two years in response to the decrease in deposit rate.
 

 

And the French 2-year government bond yield went negative for the first time.
 

But without the full QE in place, longer dated bond yields actually increased, as yield curves steepened. This carried over to the US where long-term yields rose as well.
 

 

And by the way here is one reason Germany remains uneasy with an all-out QE program –
 

Source: ECB