Why wouldn’t it be?
Apparently, the European Central Bank (ECB) balance sheet was meant to shrink significantly in 2019. It has shrunk just 0.5% in 2019 until July 5th (as against 5% for the Federal Reserve in the same period).
At 4.67 trillion Euros (or around 41% of Euro area or Eurozone GDP), it doesn’t look like things are going to change quickly.
Sweden’s Central Bank, the Riksbank raised interest rates for the first time in seven years on Thursday which might cause further European monetary tightening. Riksbank’s benchmark repo rate was raised 25 bps from -0.5% earlier to -0.25%. It still remains negative though.
The European Central Bank (ECB) only started its Quantitative Easing (or QE) program in March 2015 in order to fight ultralow inflation in the Eurozone (also called the Euro Area). It somewhat worked by weakening the Euro (€), increasing exports, giving the stock market a boost and drastically lowering financing costs for European governments and corporations. This caused the ECB balance sheet to soar over €4.5 trillion or 45% of Eurozone GDP.
Central Banks have grown their balance sheets significantly in the past 20 years and almost exponentially since the 2008 financial crisis. Here’s how much the balance sheets of the Bank of Japan, the Swiss National Bank, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have grown in the 21st century,
Total assets: 540.8036 trillion Yen (JPY) = 4.93 trillion US Dollars (USD)
As of date: May 1, 2018
Asset size as percentage of GDP: 101% of GDP
Interesting information: The Bank of Japan has a target to buy 6 trillion Yen ($54 billion) worth of exchange traded funds a year. It now holds almost 82% of all ETFs in Japan and is indirectly the largest shareholder in many large Japanese companies, almost about half of listed companies in Japan.
The European Central Bank (ECB) announced on Wednesday that it will halve its bond buys to 15 billion Euros (from the current 30 billion Euros) a month from October then shut the programme at the end of the year.
ECB’s balance sheet has increased by 2 trillion Euros since 2015 when it announced its bond buying programme. 2-year yields for most of the Eurozone countries are currently negative and 10-year yields in most cases are lower than that of the United States. The European Central Bank (ECB) is by far the biggest holder of European bonds and the biggest (almost 90%) buyer of the weaker Eurozone (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece) countries debt since 2015. The ECB balance sheet is now over 4.5 trillion Euros, some 45% of Eurozone GDP.
Continue reading “This is what is likely to happen when the European Central Bank ends bond buying”
Central Banks have grown their balance sheet in the past 20 years and almost exponentially since the 2008 financial crisis
Bank of Japan
Total assets: 540.8036 trillion Yen (JPY) = 4.93 trillion US Dollars (USD)
As of date: May 1, 2018
Asset size as percentage of GDP: 101% of GDP
Q1 2018 GDP
The US, the UK, France and Spain all reported GDP numbers over the last week.
US real GDP increased at an annual rate of 2.3% in the first quarter of 2018 as per an advance estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Read more about it here.
Personal consumption collapsed, with vehicle sale falling significantly. Business inventories were up significantly too. Total employee compensation (which includes wages and benefits) rose 2.7% over past 12 months, up from 2.4% a year ago and the highest since Q3 2008, while the household savings rate fell to a multi-year low of 3.1%.
ECB sells yet another bond after spotting an error
The European Central Bank (ECB) via Bundesbank has sold yet another bond issued by Telefonica Deutschland a year after it bought it. The bond which was due to mature in 2021 breached an ECB rule that they should not hold bonds that pay a step-up coupon (one that could go up in value if certain conditions are met – in this case if the company was acquired).
This was the fourth time they found an error in 2018 and sold a corporate bond. When this happened a couple of weeks ago, we reported it here and asked how many more errors will the ECB find? Well, it would appear traders have taken notice. The ECB sold this bond just after a sharp fall in the price of the bond, implying traders know what all bonds the ECB has bought in error and is likely to sell. Continue reading “Weekly Overview: ECB sells yet another corporate bond after spotting an error; US Banks report Q1 results; Facebook moves user data from Ireland to the US”
Spotify’s direct listing
As reported earlier, Spotify listed directly on the NYSE today at an opening price of $165.90, the stock ended the first day of trading in New York at $149.01, up from the reference price of $132 set yesterday by the NYSE.
Spotify has offered a streaming service since 2008 and has 159 million monthly active users including 71 million paid subscribers globally. It generated €4 billion (about $5billion) in revenues last year, up over 40% from 2016, and a €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) net loss compared with about €542 million ($664 million) in 2016. The company’s average revenue per user has declined from €6.84 in 2015 to €5.32 in 2017 as it promotes its “Family Plan” which allows several users to share one account. Analyst reckon that Apple Music will overtake Spotify in terms of paid subscribers in under 2 years, yet the company is now valued at $28 billion (5.6 times revenues). Continue reading “Spotify’s direct listing (and comparison to Netflix); ECB sells bond after spotting an error after 2 years; Nomura to hire fewest graduates in five years as it spends more on robots”