As you probably/hopefully noticed on Thursday, the DAX hit a record following the announcement of the ECB taper and unquestionably, one reason why is because by slapping a dovish bow on an announcement about paring back asset purchases, Draghi managed to drive the euro lower, thus supporting European equities.
But just because everyone heard what they wanted to hear (namely that although the pace will slow, the purchases will continue and could be ramped back up if the proverbial shit hits the fan in the periphery, and also that “well past” means “well past”) doesn’t mean the ECB didn’t announce what they announced.
Plus, if you really wanted to, you could interpret the dovishness as either a tacit admission that the market simply cannot stomach anything that even approximates real conviction on normalization or that Draghi actually sees real risks on the horizon or probably both.
Events in Spain on Friday underscored the fact that all is not in fact well in what is less a unified bloc and more a loose confederation of nation states with economies that are so disparate as to make the whole idea of a union implausible.
With all of that in mind, here’s former trader Richard Breslow to send you off to the weekend on a characteristically dour note…
Via Bloomberg
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