Dr. Platon Monokroussos, Chief Market Economist, Deputy General Manager, Eurobank Ergasias S.A
HIGHLIGHTS
WORLD ECONOMIC & MARKET DEVELOPMENTS
GLOBAL MARKETS: The Bank of Japan (BoJ) unexpectedly announced on Friday a new program for purchases of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as well as an extension of the average maturity of its government bond holdings. Most Asian bourses edged lower and major European equity indices opened in the red on Friday, mirroring the negative tone in Wall Street overnight. In FX markets, the US dollar initially firmed against the JPY soon after the BoJ’s announcement, hitting a two-week high of 123.56 earlier in Asian trade, before retreating to a one-week low of 121.25/26 in European trade at the time of writing as the BoJ’s new ETF program was perceived as rather small.
GREECE: According to the quarterly labour force survey (non-seasonally adjusted data), released yesterday by EL.STAT. the unemployment rate stood at 24.0% in the 3rd quarter 2015. Compared to the 3rd quarter 2014 (25.5%) there was a decrease of 1.5 percentage points. Furthermore, the number of employed and unemployed persons came up to 3, 671k (2.3%, yoy%) and 1, 161k (-5.6%, yoy%) respectively.
SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE
BULGARIA: The current account surplus widened to 2.5% of GDP in January-October 2015, up from 2.2% of GDP in January – October 2014.
ROMANIA: The Ministry of Finance sold at an auction on Thursday RON 500m of 1 Year T-bills at an average accepted yield of 0.97%.
CESEE MARKETS: CESEE assets firmed across the board on Thursday after the US Fed Reserve lifted interest rates.
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Daily Overview December 18 2015
