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ECB accounts day: the minutes that sometimes move the euro

About four weeks after each ECB meeting, the bank publishes an account of the discussion, similar to minutes. Most of the time it's a non-event for EURUSD. Occasionally it moves the euro because it shows a different picture from the press conference.

The press conference gives the president's view, which is usually the consensus. The accounts show the range of views in the room. If they reveal that more members wanted a different decision, or that there was concern the press conference didn't emphasise, the market can react.

The release is usually in the European early afternoon, during the London session. That means decent liquidity, but often the reaction is small and short lived. The text comes out as a document, so it takes a few minutes for headlines to summarise it, and the move can come in stages as people read it.

I mostly treat it as a minor event. I avoid holding a tight EURUSD scalp right into the release, and if the euro moves, I wait to see whether it holds before reading anything into it.

It's more relevant when the next meeting is finely balanced. Then any hint of how members are leaning can matter more than usual.

Headlines from the accounts can be misleading in the first minutes. News services pick out a line or two, and the first headline might highlight a hawkish comment while the document overall is balanced. The market sometimes reacts to the first headline and then reverses as fuller summaries come out. That's one reason I wait. If you want to read the document yourself, it's on the ECB website, but for a scalper, waiting ten minutes for the reaction to settle is usually enough to know whether it mattered. Waiting fifteen or twenty minutes for fuller coverage tends to give a clearer picture than reacting to the first line on the wire.

Fed minutes come out in a similar way, three weeks after each meeting, in the US afternoon. They tend to get more attention than the ECB accounts and can move the dollar more. On days when both are scheduled within a short time of each other, or when Fed minutes come out the same week as an ECB meeting, the combination can make EURUSD more active than usual. Checking both banks' schedules together helps you spot those weeks in advance. If both come out in the same week, the Fed minutes usually dominate the dollar side of EURUSD, and the ECB accounts get less attention.

The accounts usually confirm what the market already knows, but sometimes they show a split in the committee that was not visible in the press conference. That can move EURUSD for a short time.

For scalpers, it is worth noting the release time and avoiding trades in the minutes around it, but there is usually no need to change the whole day's plan.

Knowing what was said at the press conference after the meeting helps a lot when reading the accounts. If the President's comments at the time were balanced, and the accounts show a more hawkish discussion, that's news. If the accounts just repeat what was already said publicly, the market has little reason to move. I'd reread a summary of the press conference before the accounts come out, so I know what the baseline is. The surprise, if any, is in how the accounts differ from that baseline. It only takes a few minutes and makes the release much easier to read.

Do the accounts matter more when the next ECB meeting is close or far away? I'd say they matter more when the next meeting is a few weeks off and the market is unsure what will happen. Then any hint about the discussion inside the council can shift expectations. If the next meeting is very close, or the outcome is already widely expected, the accounts are often ignored. Checking how the market currently prices the next decision, through rate expectations, gives a sense of how sensitive the euro might be.