Copy-paste: www.zerohedge.com/news/why-euro-so-strong-or-why-market-expects-700bn-fed-qe3
The question puzzling currency markets is why the EUR is so strong.  While we have argued that during the risk-off period of the last month or so post-LTRO2 (before Tuesday) EURUSD strength appeared to be driven by repatriation flows and balance sheet reduction, new information over the last couple of weeks driving the expectation that growth will be weak enough in the US to keep US policy very stimulative for a nice long time, we tend to agree with Steven Englander of Citigroup who argues that it looks very much as if QE3/Fed-stimulus anticipations are behind the EUR relative strength recently. Indeed the recent USD weakness is pretty much across the board, suggesting that it is less EUR attractiveness than USD unattractiveness that is driving the EUR’s gains.  That said, I think the buzz around various euro zone measures to help out banks and ease the rigidities of the fiscal compact is also helping support the EUR by reducing tail risk, but right now the USD/Fed is the bigger story. Back of the envelope math based on the Fed/ECB balance sheets and EURUSD implies the market expects around $700bn of QE3 and given swap-spread differentials there appears to be little liquidity premium to reduce this expectation.
The current EURUSD rate implies a Fed/ECB ratio of around 1.2x which infers that the market expects around $700bn of liquidity from the Fed relative to the ECB in the short-run...


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