Goldman Says 50% Chance of ECB QE in Early 2015

There is a 50 percent chance that the European Central Bank (ECB) will start to buy government bonds in the first quarter of 2015, according to Goldman Sachs’ top strategists.

“The emphasis that Draghi put on the urgency of expanding the balance sheet makes us think that government securities will be the asset of choice to pursue that objective, that’s why we have that forecast right now,” Francesco Garzarelli, co-head of global macro and markets research at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC on Thursday.

Unlike central banks in the U.K., U.S. and elsewhere, the ECB has not yet launched a sovereign bond-buying – or quantitative easing (QE) – program.
“The market is going from theme to theme and now the theme is the ECB. And there is an idea that the baton in this QE relay has been passed to the ECB, hence the government bond purchase discussion,” Garzarelli added.

via CNBC

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza