After a surprisingly muted reaction in the....>

FOREX: After a surprisingly muted reaction in the wake of Wednesday's Fed

meeting, the ECB gave USD bulls the greenlight as it issued a somewhat dovish

statement, sending DXY to test the YTD high.

- EUR rallied on the ECB's formal APP taper announcement, before pulling back

sharply and extending lower as the central bank committed to leaving rates

unchanged until after Summer 2019. This, twinned with the ongoing

data-dependency of APP (Draghi didn't rule out firing up APP again in the

future), gave a dovish tilt to today's meeting.

- The ECB statement supported equities and suppressed bond yields in Europe,

this didn't hamper JPY, which rose against all others except the greenback.

- Focus Friday turns to the BoJ meeting as well as Eurozone final CPI data,

Michigan sentiment data and speeches from ECB's Nowotny, Coeure and Smets as

well as comments from Fed's Kaplan & RBA's Eliis.