Bank of England to pause rate cuts, focus shifts to bond sales
By Andy Bruce
Sept 13 (Reuters) -An interest rate cut from the Bank of England next week looks unlikely but investors will be watching its September meeting for clues about future moves, as well as a decision over the pace of its bond sales - a hot political topic.
All 65 economists in a Reuters poll said the BoE will likely hold rates at 5.0% on Sept. 19, after cutting from a 16-year high of 5.25% in August.
News on price pressures has been mixed. Wage growth cooled as members of the Monetary Policy Committee expected last month and the economy failed to grow in July.
But the Decision Maker Panel - a business survey favoured by the MPC - showed wage growth expectations stopped falling, and data on Wednesday will likely show inflation above the central bank's 2% target.
Markets on Thursday priced in a roughly one-in-five chance of an interest rate cut next week, with a 0.25 percentage point reduction fully priced for November.
With British wage growth and services inflation riding high, investors think the BoE will loosen policy by less than the U.S. Federal Reserve over the next year and similarly to the European Central Bank - although the ECB has already cut rates twice this year, including a day ago.
Economists at Nomura said the BoE's close 5-4 vote in August and healthy business surveys pointed to a hold next Thursday.
"We see the MPC skipping this month's meeting and cutting interest rates again only in November," they said, adding that the MPC's Swati Dhingra was likely to be the sole voice for a cut this time.
QT TO THE CHASE
Bond investors are hotly anticipating Thursday's annual decision on the pace of the BoE's quantitative tightening (QT) programme - the reversal of hundreds of billions of pounds of British government bond purchases from past attempts to stimulate the economy.
Last year the MPC voted to run down its stock of gilts by 100 billion pounds ($131 billion) through a combination of active sales and allowing bonds to mature.
Lawmakers have criticised the QT programme because it brings forward losses sustained by the BoE, which purchased gilts in past years at much higher prices than their current sale value. Those losses are paid for by already-stretched taxpayers.
Nonethelesss, the BoE could on Thursday announce an acceleration of its QT programme, reflecting the fact that it holds 87 billion pounds of gilts that are due to mature naturally over the next year, leaving little room for active gilt sales at the current pace.
"The vote on the pace of QT could be the more important one," Andrew Goodwin, chief UK economist at Oxford Economics consultancy, said.
BoE Governor Andrew Bailey has said QT is needed to restore the central bank's firepower if it has to stimulate the economy with bond purchases again.
Goodwin and most other forecasters think the BoE is likely to keep QT running at 100 billion pounds per year, but he said an increase to 115-120 billion pounds was a plausible scenario.
Given its impact on the state's budget, finance minister Rachel Reeves will take a keen interest in Thursday's QT decision. Last week she said QT was an operational matter for the BoE when pressed by lawmakers about the scale of taxpayer losses.
Reeves will likely change Britain's fiscal rules to exclude the impact of the BoE's QT programme in her inaugural budget, due on Oct. 30, Goodwin said.
"This change would increase her fiscal headroom considerably," he said.
($1 = 0.7648 pounds)
Editing by Andrew Heavens
免責聲明: XM Group提供線上交易平台的登入和執行服務，允許個人查看和/或使用網站所提供的內容，但不進行任何更改或擴展其服務和訪問權限，並受以下條款與條例約束：（i）條款與條例；（ii）風險提示；（iii）完全免責聲明。網站內部所提供的所有資訊，僅限於一般資訊用途。請注意，我們所有的線上交易平台內容並不構成，也不被視為進入金融市場交易的邀約或邀請 。金融市場交易會對您的投資帶來重大風險。
所有缐上交易平台所發佈的資料，僅適用於教育/資訊類用途，不包含也不應被視爲適用於金融、投資稅或交易相關諮詢和建議，或是交易價格紀錄，或是任何金融商品或非應邀途徑的金融相關優惠的交易邀約或邀請。
本網站的所有XM和第三方所提供的内容，包括意見、新聞、研究、分析、價格其他資訊和第三方網站鏈接，皆爲‘按原狀’，並作爲一般市場評論所提供，而非投資建議。請理解和接受，所有被歸類為投資研究範圍的相關内容，並非爲了促進投資研究獨立性，而根據法律要求所編寫，而是被視爲符合營銷傳播相關法律與法規所編寫的内容。請確保您已詳讀並完全理解我們的非獨立投資研究提示和風險提示資訊，相關詳情請點擊 這裡查看。
