The European Central Bank bought less bonds of peripheral countries in the past week: only 3.662 billion. This is lower than last week and far lower than 8.581 billion it bought two weeks ago.
This fall comes as hopes are high once again for the European Summit this Friday. Yields on Spanish and Italian bonds fell sharply today, without the help of the ECB. Perhaps next week’s figures will be even lower.
While the buys are slowing down, the portfolio of the central bank is still growing and reached €207 billion. The ECB tries to drain the money of the markets every week, in order to avoid enlarging the amount of money in circulation.
Last week, the ECB failed to drain out the full amount of money. While this isn’t the first time that this happened, the growing portfolio and the higher tensions weigh on the bank’s operations.
The results of this week’s drain operation will be published on Wednesday, as usual.
For more on the euro, see the EUR/USD forecast.
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