Talking Points
- Monetary policy left unchanged, as expected, attention turns to the press conference.
- ECB reiterates that key rates will remain at their present levels for an extended period of time.
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The European Central Bank (ECB) left all monetary policy measures unchanged at its last meeting of 2017. Interest Rate was left at 0%, the Marginal Lending Facility at 0.25% and the Deposit Facility Rate at -0.40%. The single currency barely moved post-release with trader’s attention now turning to ECB President Mario Draghi’s last press conference of 2017 and the quarterly ECB staff projections on growth and inflation.
The central bank said that interest rates would remain at their present levels from an extended period of time and well past the horizon of the asset purchase program. The ECB recently said that it would continue buying bonds at a slower rate of EUR30 billion a month from January to September 2018.
EUR/USD Price Chart One Minute Timeframe (December 14, 2017)
IG Client Sentiment data show 41.1% of traders are net-long EUR/USD with the ratio of traders short to long at 1.43 to 1. The number of traders net-long is 7.3% lower than yesterday and 7.4% lower from last week, while the number of traders net-short is 7.8% higher than yesterday and 2.5% lower from last week. We typically take a contrarian view to crowd sentiment, and the fact traders are net-short suggests prices may continue to rise. Traders are further net-short than yesterday and last week, and the combination of current sentiment and recent changes gives us a stronger EUR/USD-bullish contrarian trading bias.
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--- Written by Nick Cawley, Analyst
To contact Nick, email him at nicholas.cawley@ig.com
Follow Nick on Twitter @nickcawley1
