A quick update while the Draghi is still live
The ECB interest rate decision was announced less than an hour ago and now president Draghi is live with the press conference. They kept the interest rates unchanged as expected. The Euro had a wobble up and down for a few minutes but it stabilized after the interest rate decision, waiting for Draghi to appear live on screens.
The ECB statement was released just a while ago and we can see that the ECB left the economic projections unchanged in general. The growth is expected to be 0.1% higher this year and 0.1% lower in 2017 and 2018. The inflation expectations also remain the same too.
There are two things which stand out among the comments though:
1 – There are no near term plans to increase the economic stimulus
2 – The ECB is having trouble finding the inventory for its 80-90 billion Euros monthly asset purchase programme and they haven´t yet decided how to alter the programme to reach their first goal.
In the meantime, the US unemployment claims were lower than expected, but right now all the spotlights are on the ECB and Draghi. Stay tuned for more updates for Draghi´s comments.