The bar for a dovish surprise from the December ECB meeting was set rather high and the announced mix of measures was not enough to breach it. The top-up in the Pandemic Emergency Programme Programme by EUR500bn was expected, more Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations was the market’s base case and with the ECB not deciding to increase monthly buying under the Asset Purchase Programme (this remains at EUR20bn per month or cutting the depo rate), this was simply not enough. See our ECB Review for more details and the list of measures announced today. As we argued in our ECB Cribsheet, there was a degree of ... (full story)