(Reuters) - There is still only an even chance the European Central Bank will buy sovereign bonds according to a Reuters poll of traders taken after the bank's policymakers said they all stood ready to take more action if needed.
ECB President Mario Draghi said last week the Governing Council was unanimous in its decision to prepare for more unconventional easing measures if required and the bank's staff would lay the groundwork.
Markets have been watching the ECB to judge how close the bank is to launching additional steps, particularly after the Bank of Japan unexpectedly expanded its stimulus to try to add to inflationary pressures in the Japanese economy.
With euro zone inflation dangerously close to zero and economic growth stuttering, calls for the ECB to launch more aggressive easing measures have also come from organisations like the International Monetary Fund.
But euro area money market traders do not appear to have construed Draghi's remarks last week as a step closer to buying government debt and pegged the possibility of that happening at 50 percent.
That consensus is unchanged from last week's poll, before the ECB's policy-setting meeting and remarks.
"It's not what he (Draghi) said or didn't say. I think he will have a hard time convincing some of the hawks on the board," said one trader.
"If it were up to him, it would have been a done deal already. It's more about ECB politics and the willingness to do so."
Last Tuesday, sources told Reuters at least seven and possibly as many as 10 of the 24 council members were against U.S.-style quantitative easing.
If the ECB does implement full-blown QE, it will do so in the first half of 2015 and spend 300 billion euros (235.44 billion pounds) in total, according to the trader poll which also said the bank would expand its balance sheet by a trillion euros - a target Draghi confirmed last week - by the end of next year.
The regular poll showed banks will repay 4 billion euros in total of the two ECB long-term loans next week, less than the 6.432 billion euros that will be returned this week.
And the ECB will allot 95 billion euros at its regular weekly refinancing operation, less than the 98.189 billion euros allotted last week.
(Reporting by Deepti Govind; Polling by Rahul Karunakar and Hari Kishan; Editing by Toby Chopra)