Glosario

Quantitative easing (QE) is an unconventional monetary policy tool that consists in a large-scale purchasing of assets by a central bank using money that it has newly created.It is more colloquially referred to as "printing money", though no actual banknotes are printed. Merely, money is electronically "created".QE aims to raise the price of government bonds while simultaneously driving down their yields. This is a method used to push banks to invest in riskier assets and lend more to businesses and individuals.These monetary stimulus measures have a direct impact on the exchange rate, as it causes the depreciation of the currency. In the Eurozone, for instance, only the expectation of a 18-month long QE programme announced by the European Central Bank at the start of 2015 triggered a sharp depreciation in the euro, that reached its lowest level in 9 years against the U.S. dollar.Prices of commodities, including precious metals, and stocks, tend to rise when QE is in action. European stock markets climbed to their highest levels in 7 years in expectation of the ECB QE programme, which involved the purchase of €1.1 trillion of assets.The U.S. stock market experienced sustained highs largely as a result of the 6 year long QE programme implemented by the Federal Reserve, which ran from 2008 to 2014.

In a currency pair, the quote currency interest rate is the interest rate set by the central bank that issues the quote currency.In FX markets, currencies are quoted in relation to other currencies and represented in pairs. In the EUR/USD pair, for instance, the euro is the base currency and the dollar is the quote currency, so in this example, the quote currency interest rate is the rate set by the US Federal Reserve.Interest rates are a fundamental element in currency forward contracts. The differential between the interest rates of the base and quote currencies defines the forward points that are added or subtracted to the exchange rate to determine the forward rate.