Much has been said and written about the next two ECB meetings’ rate hikes. The upshot is, as our colleagues highlight, the ECB still has a licence to hike, and a 50bp increase is pretty much set in stone this week. In all likelihood, guidance for a 50bp March hike will be repeated too but the March meeting will also feature a new set of forecasts that should heavily influence the ECB’s decision. As a result, markets will be tempted to rely more on their anticipation of how the ECB staff forecast will evolve at that meeting, rather than on president Christine Lagarde’s guidance. As our economics team noted in their ... (full story)