EUR/GBP is up on the day due to the ECB’s attempt to revive lending and thereby investment rather and the rebound of the euro exchange rate came after the comments by Draghi that the ECB could not cut rates as low as it wanted to.
Carsten Brzeski, analyst at ING offered the ECB’s decisions in more detail:”- The ECB cut interest rates by 5 and 10 basis points respectively. To be precise, the ECB lowered the refi rate to zero, from 0.05%, the deposit rate to -0.4%, from -0.3% and the marginal lending rate to 0.25% from 0.3%.
– Monthly QE purchases will be increased from 60bn euro to 80bn euro.
– To make higher QE purchases feasible, the ECB will include corporate bonds into the QE purchases and the threshold for purchases of bonds by international organizations and multilateral development banks will be increased from 33% to 50% per issuance.
– A new series of four targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO) will be launched in June this year. Banks will be able to get ECB money either at the refi rate (now zero) or even at the deposit rate (now -0.4%), depending on the banks’ lending books.”
EUR/GBP levels
EUR/GBP is looking for a break of the four month uptrend line at 0.7827, but has only made a high so far on the day of 0.7810 post ECB. Key resistance, on a break higher, is the recent high of 0.7927 and the 0.7933 200 week moving average. Failures to the upside will otherwise expose, 0 .7567, being the 38.2% retracement and potentially 0.7455, the 50% retracement, according to Karen Jones, chief analyst at Commerzbank. “EUR/GBP increasingly looks to have topped here and we will for now stick with our neutral forecast.”
(Market News Provided by FXstreet)