Awaiting first ever ECB minutes

Today European Central Bank (ECB) is going to publish the accounts of the January governing council meet at 12:30 pm GMT. In the January meet, ECB governing council announced Quantitative easing (QE) of € 60 billion a month. In such sense, the accounts of that particular meeting are of very high interest.

• ECB will start the actual purchase from March, 2015. So far by the announcement the EUR/USD exchange rate has fallen from then 1.165 area. Currently the pair is trading at 1.14, up 0.15% for the day & off its low of sub 1.11 made in January, 2015.

• We expect the minutes to be somewhat market moving, but more of a good read. Probable market movement is difficult to gauge, as the report is being published for the first time ever.

• We advise against jumping on the immediate movement after the release, as it can easily turn out to be a trap. Nevertheless if the report includes individual macro-economic projections which differ from the general consensus, it will be market moving depending on the projection.  

• Another point to watch out for is unanimity. If German Bundesbank turns out to be the only one opposing last month's QE, the mood with the euro can very well turn bearish.