Global Central Bank Easing Nearing Important Inflexion Point
Recent comments from the Fed, ECB and BoJ have rattled financial markets after a summer of relatively low volatility.
The correction in financial markets has so far been relatively modest, particularly for equities and the dollar. But the questions remain where global monetary policy goes from here, the implications for asset valuations and ultimately whether elevated global risk appetite will correct more forcefully.
My core view is that eight years of ultra-low (and in some cases negative) central bank policy rates and expansive bond-buying programs have helped stabilise global growth and inflation, albeit at low levels.
At the same time, the costs of ultra-loose monetary policy, including asset price bubbles, distortions in bond markets, pressure on the banking sector and even rising inequality, may be starting to outweigh the benefits.
Therefore, major central banks, with the exception of the BoJ, may refrain from loosening monetary policy further near-term.
I would certainly expect central bank policy rate cuts to become increasingly less frequent than in the past and the ECB and BoE to keep the modalities of their current QE programs broadly unchanged for now.
At the very least, the world’s most influential central bankers may going forward tweak a discourse which has in recent years largely focused on doing “whatever it takes”.
To be clear, the risk near-term remains biased towards more central bank monetary policy easing. Bar the Fed and possibly a handful of EM central banks still fighting weak currencies and high inflation, no major central bank is likely to hike policy rates or tighten monetary policy this year, in my view. That’s a story for 2017, at the earliest.
But if we have indeed reached an inflection point in global central bank monetary policy, if anything financial markets will become more sensitive to any downturns in still tepid global growth and inflation and to the negative side-effects of loose monetary policy.
In this context higher volatility is likely to prevail and global risk appetite may struggle to forcefully regain traction for now. Read more