In what has been an excellent year for global equity markets, the trend looks set to continue into 2015. The main driver behind equity performance is 2014 is the dreaded ‘QE’ lead by the worlds big two central banks (FED & BOJ) but what has the ECB been doing?

There is no surprise that we have seen the ECB and more importantly its president Mr Draghi play his cards close to his chest over the last 12 months and in his typical fashion he manages to say a lot without saying anything at all. He has bening hinting all year that the ECB has an array of measures to combat the risk of deflation which we as investors and EU residents are yet to witness. He has made it clear that his ECB board ‘won’t tolerate’ low inflation . Unfortunately there isn’t much more left he can do with the interest rates or interbank lending rate so as the deflationary risks continue we are likely to see an element of QE in some shape or form over the coming months.

So what does this mean to us?

Well unless you are planning on a shopping trip to NYC or a holiday over in the US over the coming months there will be no drastic change to our everyday lives. Ireland has continued to outperform the majority of its fellow EU states in its recovery process but there a few analysts that are a bit suspect about the irish recovery and in particularly its GDP figures being overstated due to the large volume of money being repatriated abroad.

If we do see the ECB press the trigger we should see European stocks well supported into 2015. Although we have seen interest rates fall to record lows the banks are reluctant to pass on the big reductions as the majority of them are feeling the pinch from historic tracker mortgages that continue to plague their balance sheets.