The Czech koruna continues to outperform the rest of the region. The better than expected result of Germany’s consumer confidence supported the single currency as well as regional currencies early in the morning. As a result, both the koruna and the Hungarian forint posted modest gains (about 0.3%), whereas the polish zloty closed more or less unchanged.
Let us remind that markets currently bet on a rate cut in Poland within next 9 months. Moreover, these expectations were even stronger in the beginning of this week. On Monday, the spread between FRA 6x9 and Wibor (78,19 USD, -2,62%) was hovering around 25bps. The NBP’s governor Marek Belka curbed market expectations yesterday as he said that it was too early to announce a significant
change in monetary policy bias. Belka admitted that the desire to further increase the interest rates this year had significantly decreased. According to the minutes from the latest Monetary Policy Council (MPC) meeting (July), some members of MPC did not rule out further hikes this year in case that the inflation development would further deteriorate. Clearly, the situation is quite different now. The uncertainty related to the latest development in the global economy has significantly changed the view of Polish central bankers.
With respect to today’s Bernanke’s speech at the conference at Jackson Hole, we don’t expect the Fed President to herald a new high profile initiative to support the economy at this stage. He will keep the door open for more QE in case the economic outlook would worsen, but probably not much more than that. In such a scenario, investors in riskier assets (such as CE currencies)
might be disappointed.
