Let’s cut straight to the chase.
If Europe is all about Mario Draghi vs the Germans, then this is a case of “Mario 1, Germany ‘nil points’”.
He looked unusually cheerful when he arrived on stage late (held up by the lifts, apparently).
Then the boss of the European Central Bank told everyone that he’s going to pump €60bn a month into the markets. He’s going to do it until at least September 2016. But it’ll “be conducted until we see a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation.”
In other words, this is open-ended if it needs to be.
Also, the amount of money being printed is significantly higher than the leaked €50bn that we heard about yesterday (maybe the ECB was doing some kite-flying to gauge the market’s reaction).
Did this do the job? It depends on what job you want or expect it to do.
If you expect it to save the entire eurozone economy from deflation, high unemployment, and extreme misery – well, no, it won’t. Quantitative easing (QE) elsewhere in the world hasn’t really achieved that.
But if you expect it to drive bond prices up (and yields down) and to drive share prices higher – then yes, it seems to be working.
It’s also kept the euro down, which is of course the quickest way that this can help the ‘real’ economy, by helping exporters for example.
We’ve always said that QE was likely in Europe and that it was likely to be good for asset prices. So we’d stick with our suggestion to buy Europe – and if you want to know what stocks to buy, get hold of the latest issue of MoneyWeek magazine, out on Friday.
If you’re not already a subscriber, you can get your first eight issues free right now – but act quickly, that deal won’t last forever.