Dr. Platon Monokroussos, Chief Market Economist, Deputy General Manager, Eurobank Ergasias S.A
HIGHLIGHTS
WORLD ECONOMIC & MARKET DEVELOPMENTS
GLOBAL MARKETS: European bourses moved higher in early trade on Wednesday supported by lingering expectations that the ECB will adopt an asset purchase program including sovereign bonds at its monetary policy meeting on Thursday. Against this background, the EUR remained under pressure while the JPY rebounded in early European trade favored by the BoJ’s decision to stay pat on its monetary policy, disappointing those poised for further easing.
GREECE: According to Bank of Greece’s BoP statistics data, the current account balance recorded a surplus of €2.5bn in January-November 2014 compared to €1.3bn in the same period a year earlier. This was mainly attributed to a €2.8bn (17.1%YoY) increase in the services surplus to €19.1bn following a rise of €1.3bn to €13.3bn (10.8%YoY) in tourism receipts.
SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE
SERBIA: Director of Public Debt Administration Branko Drcelic was quoted as saying in an interview on Tuesday that the government plans to tap international markets with €1.5bn in debt out of a total €5.8bn of gross funding needs this year.
BULGARIA: The Ministry of Finance sold on Tuesday BGN 200mn in 6-month T-Bills at an average accepted yield of 0.16% (0.32% annual) and a bid to cover ratio of 2.99.
CESEE MARKETS: Taking their cue from gains in major global bourses, emerging stock markets opened broadly higher on Wednesday, led by gains in technology shares and Chinese equities. Expectations that the ECB will adopt additional monetary stimulus measures at its upcoming MPC meeting tomorrow also continued to provide support. Turkey’s BIST 100 index broadly outperformed its regional peers favored by the Central Bank’s largely unexpected MPC decision yesterday to cut its key policy (1-week repo) rate by 50bps to 7.75%. CESEE currencies were little changed in European trade today awaiting tomorrow’s ECB monetary policy decision.
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Dailyoverview January 21, 2015
