Decisions: no rate moves; asset purchase continues;
Update on non standard measures: They increased issue share limit from 25 to 33% (monitizable assets). This sentence cause a huge rip in the preopen futures. Traders misunderstood it to be an increase in the amount of purchases (increasing QE). It is not! It's changing the MIX of assets they are buying NOT the amount. Silly traders. The rip got priced out immediately.
The wrong kneejerk reaction resulted in spike in S&P, spike in bonds, crash in rates, plunged in Euro etc.
Weird point though: on the rip in S&P futures, OIL fell hard and I am not sure why. Maybe this is the start of decoupling the recent markets moves from oil moves (a good thing).
Here is a list of things they measured:
They saw renewed downside risk
Continued weaker economy
Inflation still too low vs. expectations (they blame low oil)
Lower than expected real GDP
Weaker economic pace (they blamed foreign demand)
Weaker economic growth to likely to persist
YET they stuck to QE size at 60B
But.... they did say that they can do more!
WHAT? It sounds that current measure are not working... so a sane person would think it's reasonable to act now. I suspect that they are tapped out. Meaning that they don't have enough stuff to buy; the proverbial "bazooka" may actually be a high power rifle at best. Draghi said things like 'Willingness to act readyness to act and capacity to act.' I challenge the capacity part...