The Hungarian forint erased previous gains on Wednesday although the EUR/HUF currency pair hit a three-week low in intraday trading. In the afternoon, however, the forint faced a relatively strong sell-off after the central bank (MNB) announced that an extraordinary meeting and press conference regarding the introduction ofpro-growth measures would be held today. Let us recall that the fears of unconventional measures have been behind forint’s poor performance this year; on a year-to-date basis, the forint has weakened by nearly four percent against the euro. Regarding the list of possible measures, it may include support of lending and trimming the amount of foreign-currency loans to households and businesses. At the time of writing (and ahead of the conference which starts at 11 AM), the forint is under a moderate pressure and the EUR/HUF pair is hovering at 303.0 level.
As far as yesterday’s Czech bond auction is concerned, it showed mixed results. While the demand for the six year bond remained healthy and the Ministry sold a maximum intended amount (bid-to-cover ratio exceeded 2), the auction of fifteen year bond was undersubscribed and the Ministry sold only 1.6 billion CZK (the intended amount was 3.0 to 5.0 bln CZK). We would, however, be cautious to draw any strong conclusion from the latter auction; we think that relatively low demand might rather stem from a long maturity of the latter bond. Let us recall that in the last auction of nine year bond, the bid to-cover ratio was more than two.