The Euro continues falling slowly. Overview for 24.01.2019

The major currency pair is trading downwards; the ECB meeting was over without any surprises.

EURUSD is falling in Thursday afternoon. The current quote for the instrument is 1.1341. 

During its January meeting, the European regulator kept the key interest rate and the deposit facility rate unchanged at 0% and -0.4% respectively, just as expected. In the comments that followed, the ECB said that both rate would remain the same at least until the end of summer 2019 or until the moment the inflation got more stable. 

In general, there was nothing new in these comments. The regulator’s target for the Consumer Price Index is 2%, while the current reading in the Euro Area doesn’t exceed 1.6%. More importantly, there are signs of even slowing down and the ECB, which closed the QE program last month and decided that the economy should operate without “artificial lungs”, is very unlikely to love it.  

Probably, it’s too early right now to reflect on the result of the QE program, because it’s been little time since it was closed and the effect can not be obviously seen at the moment. However, the fact that the inflation and the GDP growth became more or less stable (at least until “poor” consumer interferes and knocks down the retail and manufacturing sectors) can’t be denied. 

The statistics published in the afternoon didn’t impress. According to the preliminary report, the Services PMI dropped from 51.2 points in December to 50.8 points this month, although it was expected to increase up to 51.5 points. The same indicator fell in France, but remained moved up in Germany.