ECB May Have Only €220 Billion In QE Left If The Hawks Get Their Way

After seemingly sending out trial balloons (via Bloomberg and Reuters simultaneously) on tapering last Thursday, which had almost zero impact (see “ECB Reportedly Considering Slashing QE in Half in January, EURUSD Shrugs), Draghi’s minions have been busy again.

“Central bank officials familiar with the matter” told Bloomberg that some - presumably quite hawkish - ECB policy makers “see room for little more than 200 billion euros ($235 billion) of purchases under the institution’s bond-buying program next year.”  With said “officials” (who asked not to be named because the talks are not private anymore) seeing a limit to bond buying of 2.5 trillion euros under the current rules and purchases expected to reach 2.28 trillion by the end of 2017, we can do the calculation.

According to last week’s trial balloons, the ECB was looking at reducing its purchases from €60 billion euros to about €30 billion for at least nine months.

As we also explained in “How Will The ECB's QE Tapering Impact The Market? Here Are The Possible Scenarios”, the market neutral level of APP extension estimated by Citi appears to be around 250 billion Euros, or roughly €50 billion more than "some" ECB policymakers will permit. The three broadly market neutral scenarios laid out in Citi’s model were €20bn x 12mth, €30bn x 9mth and €40bn x 6mth as shown below.

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