ECB's Visco helps euro recover, eyes on Fed

[March 16, 2015]  By Patrick Graham

LONDON (Reuters) - The euro found a foothold in early European deals on Monday, bolstered by concerns expressed by Italy's central bank governor about the pace of its fall as the European Central Bank launched quantitative easing.

Ignazio Visco, also a member of the ECB Governing Council, told a conference on Saturday that the euro had weakened faster than expected since the ECB first hinted at the program of money-printing last year.

After the first week of QE saw short-term German government bond yields sink deeper into negative territory and the euro slide another 3 percent, he said there were risks the program could overshoot its goal, as well as fuel an excessive rise in asset prices.

The euro gained around a third of a percent against the dollar in early deals <EUR=EBS>, and analysts said another push higher for the greenback was unlikely ahead of the conclusion of a U.S. Federal Reserve policy meeting on Wednesday.

"Visco has been a factor this morning helping the euro," said Josh O'Byrne, a strategist with Citi in London.

"The market is largely going to be quite quiet going into the Fed. The fear is that (Fed chair) Janet Yellen may highlight the dollar as a factor in policymaking and this is a factor supporting position-trimming into it."

The leading banks in the $5-trillion-a-day foreign exchange market have all called for more dollar gains and there has been no sign of cracks in that united front even as the greenback sailed past many year-end targets last week.

The euro has now lost 25 percent of its value against the greenback since May last year. The yen has fallen from less than 80 yen per dollar in late 2012 to 121.33 on Monday. Those represent a huge shift in the way the global economy is balanced, and the position of U.S. companies internationally on price, yet the Fed and U.S. politicians so far have remained largely sanguine.

The central scenario for many in Wednesday's Fed statement is whether it drops a reference to "patience" in any move towards raising interest rates. That would be seen as clearing the way for a mid-year hike and might send the dollar higher.

"While we have hit our mid-year EUR/USD target of 1.05...we see no reason to fade the downtrend," said Elsa Lignos, senior currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets.

"Our technical team highlights rallies to resistance at 1.0765 as a selling opportunity, targeting 1.0073."

A number of other central bank have meetings this week, with those in Norway and Switzerland eyed for further cuts in policy rates. Some in the market are suspicious Sweden's Riksbank could embark on more policy loosening before its next policy meeting in late April.

The crown is trading at its lowest levels to the dollar in six years but has gained strongly against the euro this month, adding to the headaches for Swedish policymakers trying to reinflate a struggling economy. It was trading a quarter of a percent stronger than Friday's lows at 8.6951. <SEK=>

(Additional reporting by Ian Chua in Sydney and Shinichi Saoshiro in Tokyo; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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