Morning Brief – Central Bank Morning

The main market theme during the European session was the moves in the FX market, with the US dollar sinking and the euro currency rising on response to comments from ECB Lagarde.

ECB’s Lagarde said during her speech today that “Inflation remains too high.” Other remarks by ECB president. Christine Lagarde said, “We are committed to reaching inflation target come what may.”

She also added that “We cannot waver, cannot declare victory yet” and the ECB “Need to bring rates to “sufficiently restrictive” territory.”

Additionally, she stressed that the ECB need to communicate clearly that they will stay at those levels for as long as necessary. And that the ECB have not yet seen the full impact of the cumulative rate hikes since last July.

With also remarks from BOE’s Dhingra, who said that UK wages are responding to inflation with a lag. Other remarks by BOE policymaker, Swati Dhingra included that a sharp drop in PPI is promising and there is a lag between fall in PPI and CPI around one or two quarters.

Morgan Stanley put out a note that the Fed hiking rates by 25 basis point in July and the Federal Reserve will just be a “skip” and not a “pause”.

OPEC put out a report yesterday stating that OPEC were had invited Guyana, one of the more faster growing oil producers globally at the moment, to join its cartel. However, that was swiftly denied by the country itself:

They stated that “We were not formally invited to join OPEC. That is not something in which we are interested. We have been invited, however, to participate in OPEC meetings.”