Traders now expect ECB to expand QE, see deposit rate cut as certain: Reuters poll

[March 07, 2016]  (Reuters) - The European Central Bank will expand the size of its monthly asset purchases on Thursday, according to a Reuters poll of traders, who also expect another cut to the already negative deposit rate.

With pressure building on the ECB to ease policy further, euro money market traders polled gave a median 68 percent chance the central bank increases its current 60 billion euros of monthly asset purchases.

That is higher than the 50-50 chance they gave just last week. Traders also said the ECB would cut its deposit rate by 10 basis points to -0.4 percent.

The regular poll of 21 traders showed banks would borrow 60.0 billion euros ($65.7 billion) at the weekly tender, just a tad lower than the 61.3 billion euros maturing from last week.

(Reporting by Shrutee Sarkar; Polling by Siddharth Iyer)

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