Central bank watcher: Peaking and tweaking

To preserve tighter conditions, central bankers will likely avoid sounding too dovish. Still, central bank rates in the US and Eurozone have likely reached their peak. It would take a re-acceleration of inflation pressures in combination with easier conditions for the Fed to restart hiking. The bar for the ECB seems even higher, given the very weak growth backdrop. In Japan, monetary policy is gradually shifting towards tighter conditions. The recent further tweak of the yield curve control policy prompted an underperformance of the 5-10-year segment of the curve. We foresee that this direction and pace of travel in policy and curve will continue. The policy outlook remains different for the PBoC, where we anticipate stable to lower policy rates over the medium term.