Member Article

Central bank inaction poorly received by markets

Stocks in Europe finished lower today, a position they established early in the day following a weak US and Asian trading sessions overnight, caused by diminished expectations of central bank interventions. The latter was picked out of minutes from the June policy meeting of the US Federal Reserve last night that showed few members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) were in favour of further quantitative easing. Contributing to this was news that the Bank of Japan was also refraining from further easing given its view that the country’s economy is slowly on the mend.

The FTSE 100 finished down 1% at 5608, underperforming its European peers. The US indices were mixed although moved little from their opening given the fall experienced last night. Gold was off by 0.5% to $1567 per ounce, whilst the euro fell further against the dollar to $1.2199 at the time of writing.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by James .