After last week’s weaker interest, investors looking for high yielding assets have returned to Central Europe yesterday. Among firming currencies, Hungarian forint
led the way dropping below 300 EUR/HUF.
Tomorrow, markets might be calm due to a public holiday (May Day) in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as well. Only the second half of this week should be more attractive from a macroeconomist´s point of view. From regional perspective, the most interesting event could be a CNB meeting next Thursday. A close attention will be paid also to global events, which might influence regional sentiment, such as an ECB Board meeting, US payrolls or the EC’s new forecast that are all scheduled for Thursday and Friday.
Today, the Hungarian central bank is likely to draw most media attention again. Governor Matolcsy is about to present details of the bank’s funding for growth scheme. We expect that Matolcsy is going to clarify planned transformation of 2- week bills into 2-week deposits. His presentation will be closely watched namely by foreign banks, as the measure threatens to cut them off from the main facility used by the NBH to withdraw excess liquidity. We guess that this event might weigh (negatively) on the forint. The first reference to new liquidity measures on April 18 weakened the forint by more than 1 %. In addition, the governor should explain how and when banks get access to HUF 500bn NBH fresh funding as well as how the central bank is going to reduce its losses.