Hawkish vs dovish: meaning, and why the currency moves

Hawkish vs dovish: two words, one axis

A hawk worries about inflation and is willing to accept slower growth to bring it down. A dove worries about jobs and growth and is willing to live with inflation a while longer. Every central banker sits somewhere on that line, and moves along it as the numbers come in.

That is the whole of the vocabulary. A bank can be hawkish while cutting, if it cuts once and says it is in no hurry to do it again. A bank can be dovish while holding, if it holds and says the next move is probably down. The decision and the lean are separate things, and the lean is the one that lasts.

The eight central banks, latest decision

A hike is the hawkish move and a cut the dovish one, but as above, the lean that came with it is what the market reads. These are the decisions themselves, from the banks' own announcements, the most recent first.

Every rate and meeting date in one place: central banks and policy rates.

Why the currency does not follow the decision

By the time a decision is announced, the market has been pricing it for weeks. Interest rate futures carry a probability for every upcoming meeting, and traders have already bought or sold the currency to match. A rate rise that was fully expected changes nothing, because everyone who wanted the currency at that rate already owns it.

What moves a currency is a change in the path: what the market now thinks the bank will do over the next year. That is why the press conference can matter more than the decision, and why the quiet sentence about the conditions for the next move is the part worth reading twice.

It also explains the move that confuses people most. A bank cuts, and the currency rises. Nothing is broken. The market had priced two cuts, the bank delivered one and sounded reluctant about the next, so the expected path went up while the rate came down.

Where the lean actually shows

• The changed sentences. Central banks reuse their own wording on purpose. The sentences that changed since last time are the message, and the ones that stayed are the noise.
• The vote. A decision carried seven to two with two members wanting more is a different signal from a unanimous one, even though the rate is identical.
• The forecasts. Banks that publish projections tell you what they expect to do with rates, growth and inflation. A forecast that moves is a plan that moved.
• The conditions. Look for the sentence that says what would have to happen before the bank moves. That is the release you watch for the next six weeks.

Hawkish relative to what

A currency is always traded against another one, so the lean only counts as a comparison. A hawkish Bank of England against an even more hawkish Federal Reserve is not a reason to buy the pound. The gap between the two banks is the reason, and the direction that gap is moving is the trade.

That is how the ranking in MacroSetup treats it. A bank's stance and its rate level feed the fundamentals of that one currency, and a pair is two of those scores against each other. The policy rate of all eight and the gap between every pair sit on the rate differentials page, and what each bank is steering by is on the central banks page.

The three mistakes

Reading the headline instead of the statement. A newsroom writes for readers who do not hold the currency. Words like surprise and shock describe the room, not the path.

Treating a lean as permanent. Two inflation prints can turn a hawk into a dove. The stance is a reading of now, which is why ours is rewritten as the data lands rather than once a quarter.

Forgetting the other side. Everything above applies to the second currency in the pair too, at the same time, and it is usually the leg nobody checked that ruins the week.