An ECB afternoon that was free of euro-criticism allowed the currency to make strides this Thursday.
As expected, Christine Lagarde and co. announced a €500 billion expansion of its pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP), while keeping its main interest rates unchanged. The central bank also failed to take issue with the euro’s recent gains, something that in and of itself spurred the currency on even further.
Against the dollar the euro climbed half a percent, while against the pound its gains swelled to 1.3%, exploiting an already weakened sterling.
Talking of the pound, the cable was also down 0.8% following news that the UK and EU have set a new end of weekend deadline to reach a Brexit deal.
With sterling under a lot of pressure, the FTSE was able to emerge as the session’s major index winner. Up half a percent, the FTSE re-crossed 6,600 and returned to its recent 9-month highs, all while its Eurozone peers were either flat, in the case of the CAC, or down 0.4%, in the case of the DAX.
Despite US daily covid-19 deaths crossing 3,000 for the first time, the Dow Jones only fell 0.1% this Thursday. And while it did spend the early hours of the open sporadically dipping below 30,000, the index appears to be in something of a holding pattern until the FDA announce their decision of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine later today.
It’s going to be interesting to see how much the Dow moves if/when the FDA do give the preparation their approval, since, post-UK deployment and a Canadian thumbs up, such an outcome feels like a forgone conclusion.
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