Investing.com – As markets expected, the European Central Bank (ECB) made no changes to its record-low interest rates and announced no new measures on Thursday.
Specifically, he ECB left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record-low 0.0%, in line with forecasts.
The central bank also held its deposit facility rate steady at -0.4% and its marginal lending rate remained at 0.25% as expected.
Additionally, the ECB also confirmed, as previously announced, that the size of its monthly quantitative easing program would continue at the new monthly pace of €60 billion ($65.4 billion) until the end of December 2017, “or beyond, if necessary”.
“The Governing Council continues to expect the key ECB interest rates to remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time, and well past the horizon of the net asset purchases,” the statement repeated.
After the decision, traders looked ahead to ECB president Mario Draghi’s press conference at 8:30AM ET (13:30GMT).
Market participants will pay close attention to any hints Draghi may give on future path of monetary policy with particular regard to the removal of accommodation, although most analysts believe that he will only note slight improvements to the economy and leave major changes until the June meeting that will be accompanied by updated economic forecasts.
After the announcement and ahead of Draghi, EUR/USD was trading at 1.0883 from around 1.0900 ahead of the release, while EUR/GBP was at 0.8442 from 0.8449 earlier.
Meanwhile, European stock markets were mostly lower. The benchmark Euro Stoxx 50 lost 0.40%, France's CAC 40 dropped 0.31%, Germany's DAX fell 0.20%, while London’s FTSE 100 traded down 0.48%.