{"id":437351,"date":"2026-09-02T11:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T04:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/ecb-policymaker-makhlouf-says-upcoming-policy-decision-will-not-surprise-anybody-437351\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T11:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T04:24:16","slug":"ecb-policymaker-makhlouf-says-upcoming-policy-decision-will-not-surprise-anybody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/ecb-policymaker-makhlouf-says-upcoming-policy-decision-will-not-surprise-anybody-437351\/","title":{"rendered":"ECB policymaker Makhlouf says upcoming policy decision will not surprise anybody"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The decision we\u2019re going to make next week will not be a surprise to anybody<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Policy is not restrictive<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">It would only be thereabouts roughly speaking, once we get above 2.75%<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">ECB needs to be ready to move there if &#8220;a significant shift in an upward direction, in terms of inflation risks&#8221; materialises<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">If inflation starts moving in the wrong direction, then we\u2019re going to have to move in that direction<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">For now, it isn&#8217;t clear that a further rate hike will be needed after the one next week<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">ECB should continue to stick with meeting-by-meeting approach<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Inflation expectations are in a good place, no evidence of second-round effects in terms of wages<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The full transcript can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/2a41f6a2-468b-44ae-bee7-a6159186c83c?syn-25a6b1a6=1\" rel=\"follow\">here<\/a> (may be gated).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">It&#8217;s definitely no surprise with markets already pretty much fully pricing in a rate hike for next week. And this pretty much confirms what the ECB will be doing, although Makhlouf does say that they may revise growth forecasts &#8220;slightly&#8221; higher.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">But in terms of policy outlook, this could be the final rate hike for the year by the ECB. Another move in December is still a close call, but is dependent on how Middle East tensions play out as well as how inflation developments progress.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Market pricing is showing ~47 bps of rate hikes priced in by year-end though, including the rate hike that will come next week.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">And as Makhlouf mentioned, the move next week is merely just a positioning play. He still doesn&#8217;t see policy as being restrictive whatsoever until they get above 2.75%. For some context, the majority of ECB policymakers have mentioned that the neutral territory is seen roughly around 1.75% to 2.25%.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">So even with the rate hike next week, policy is only going to be mildly restrictive at best. And in a potentially more heated battle against inflation, that won&#8217;t cut it. Hence, the need to ready themselves for further policy tightening down the road.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\n<p>                            This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The decision we\u2019re going to make next week will not be a surprise to anybody Policy is not restrictive It would only be thereabouts roughly speaking, once we get above 2.75% ECB&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}