Boa tarde,
Partilhamos os comentários de Salman Ahmed, Global Head of Macro and Strategic Asset Allocation at Fidelity International, após a reunião de outubro do BCE.
“At the October ECB meeting, President Lagarde sought to take a more balanced stance on the outlook for interest rates while signalling higher for longer. While the initial statement (a document formed of consensus) notably saw little to no change in its language, it was clear from the press conference that President Lagarde seems to be becoming more concerned about the growth risks posed to the Euro area economy. She highlighted that the economy remains weak, and the impact of higher rates is broadening across the economy, with early signs that the labour market is also beginning to weaken as well. She made clear that risks to growth are tilted to the downside, and that most measures of underlying inflation are now falling. She also, unlike the statement, underlined the importance of rising yields as an additional mechanism of tightening and made clear that this was because of external US macro strength describing it as “a spill over we are taking into account” that is compounding downside risks to growth and inflation. With that said, she balanced this more dovish growth assessment by emphasising that the decision to hold was a unanimous one, that there was no discussion about when or at what level of inflation to start cutting. She also said that risks to inflation were still two sided, highlighting that rising inflation expectations, energy prices and/or wages could all impede inflations downward descent."
“In our view, this hedged balancing act is largely a function of the fact that this was a non-forecast meeting and the short run outturns have largely tracked the pre-existing projections. As a result, we believe President Lagarde found it difficult to break from the existing Council consensus without the cover of new staff forecasts. Ultimately though, while we believe this newfound concern on growth outcomes is likely to presage a more definitive dovish turn at the next meeting, as President Lagarde herself admitted, transmission has already been very strong, and there is still more to come. Taken together then, we remain of the view that the ECB has over tightened and expect the Euro area to fall into recession this quarter or next. As a result, we expect the ECB to begin cutting rates sooner and more aggressively than current market pricing.”
