Markets rally on loose monetary policy moves

The past few years have been characterised by a widespread loosening of monetary policy in many countries to counteract very weak inflation and sluggish economic growth.

Interest rates have been lowered to historically low levels, with central banks also adopting non-standard measures, such as quantitative easing (QE).

Meanwhile, there has been a marked scaling back of rate hike expectations in economies where policy tightening had been expected to commence.