This summer has been extremely positive for virtually all assets in central Europe. Beside equities, both currencies and government bonds have recorded strong gains. As concerns currencies the best performer has been the Polish zloty, which has appreciated by more than 4.4% against the euro. The second place belongs to the Hungarian forint, which has received almost the same gains as the Polish currency. The bronze medal goes to the Czech Republic where the koruna has firmed just around 3% against the euro.
However, it is worth noting that contrary to the high-yielding forint and zloty, the koruna has to cope with very low domestic interest rates, which have been pushed down by a rate cut (the CNB repo rate was lowered to the all-time low of 0.5%). Moreover, the Czech central bank currently intensifies its dovish campaign and it is quite possible that the official rate will go further down (even to zero).
A generally favourable global sentiment supported government bonds too, while the other positive factor (for bond prices) was weak economic data. As result fixed income markets in Central Europe have began to price in further rate cuts. While we believe that while rate cut hopes could be fulfilled in Hungary, in case of the Czech Republic and Poland it is much less certain.