Emma Wall: Hello and welcome to the Morningstar series, 'Market Reaction.' I'm Emma Wall and here with me today is Morningstar Analyst, Jose Garcia Zarate.
Hello Jose.
Jose Garcia Zarate: Hello.
Wall: So, we've had confirmation from the ECB this afternoon, QE is happening. It's a little bit more than we were expecting though, isn't it?
Zarate: It is. Expectations from the market were around sort of like €0.5 trillion figure. This is actually much more ambitious. This is €60 billion a month until at least September 2016. You just have to do the math.
Wall: It's quite interesting how the rhetoric has changed because this time last year everyone was saying, oh, no, we won't do QE. It will be enough to sort of fiddle with interest rates. But since the oil price fell, all bets are off?
Zarate: I think that's been one of the key issues here. I mean, to be fair, I always think that Draghi back in his mind had this planned out one way or another and it's been kind of like an irony that the oil prices have come at the right time to help him do the argument for – battle against deflation in the Eurozone, much more palatable to the German Central Bank and German public in general.
Wall: What would this mean for the Eurozone then? Will this be enough?
Zarate: Well, if we look at the experiences of QE in the United States and United Kingdom, it's all a game of expectations. It's not so much whether the money is going end up in the real economy and whether the expectation is positive and the expectation should be positive.
Wall: Sentiment is everything?
Zarate: Yeah, I mean, the Eurozone, of course, is nothing similar to in the United States or the United Kingdom and Draghi actually said so much during the press conference that Eurozone is a multitude of national realities. It shouldn't be taken as a single entity. But the expectation should be positive, both for the stock market and also obviously for fixed income because that's going to be the key asset that the Central Banks are going to be buying.
Wall: Then looking at how it's going to affect consumers, investors, real people on the ground, what does this mean?
Zarate: Well, again, we go back to the issue of expectations. If you expect that the economy is going to benefit somehow, we don't know how, but somehow from this program then you generate this positive expectation about growth that might actually translate into better job creation in certain areas. So, this also – this element that of course interest rates are going to remain at rock bottom for a very long, long time. So, if you actually take into consideration that that's very good for – for example, if you've got a mortgage and also at the current – in the current circumstances inflation is very low, actually you are regaining a lot of purchasing from the get go. So, in a way, it is possible income should be much improved and that presumably should feed into much higher consumption, for example. I mean that is the expectation.
Wall: And I suppose it's bad news for savers. So, you may as well spend that cash?
Zarate: Well, savers really have it tough and they've been having it tough for many, many years and what QE does, not just in the Eurozone but what's done in the U.S. and in the U.K., is to force savers to take risks. If you want returns, you're going to have to risks.
Wall: So, is that good news for the stock market then?
Zarate: Well, let's put it this way. If you put your money in a bank account, it could be safe but you're not going to end up generating any returns. If you want returns, as I said, money has to go to riskier assets.
Wall: Jose, thank you very much.
Zarate: You're welcome.
Wall: This is Emma Wall for Morningstar. Thank you for watching.
