Central European markets decoupled in their reaction to recent development in core markets. While regional currencies have been moving sideways with modest gains fixed-income markets clearly decoupled. The Czech swap (and partly bond) curve track the euro swap curve higher, Hungarian and Polish bond yields fell sharply as risk appetite have returned to global markets.
Interestingly, beside key global events like the ECB meeting for instance there were other regional news, which could help to drive regional markets in near-term too. Among them it was a comment from MNB President Simor warned that too relax monetary policy could have negative effect on the real economy, because of the foreign-exchange risk at the households' and the corresponding credit risk at the banks' balance sheet. That is corresponding to our view that sooner or later the MNB will have to defend the forint via interest-rate hikes.
Surprising news, however, came from the Czech FinMin, which has been so encouraged by recent success with a sale of government bonds to retails investors that it plans to issues CZK 40bn more of such bonds next. Recall that this would be a quite significant amount, which will reduce the supply on the primary market. It would represent 20 percent of gross annual issuance of government bonds in 2012.
Although regional markets will definitely focus on today’s US payrolls report, it could be worth to watch the Polish political scene during this weekend, because Poles will head to the polling. The current coalition, led by the Civic Platform (PO), continues to lead opinion polls; however, its lead is far from being as strong as it was at the beginning of the year. Should the opposition, led by conservative populists Law and Justice (PiS), continue to gain ground, foreign investors might not be pleased. At the moment, likely the worst conceivable scenario would be a victory for the PiS and a significantly weakened position for the People’s Party (PSL), as this would again enable the post-communists from the SLD to get in-volved in coalition talks.