In any case, it was not a flash in the pan: Even one day after the spectacular press conference at which Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), gave the first cautious signals in the direction of tightening monetary policy, the financial markets played out the scenario of interest rate hikes in the euro area later this year.

Money markets on Friday were expecting interest rates to rise by about 50 basis points in December - which could indicate that the deposit rate could be raised to zero from the current minus 0.5 percent.

Farewell to Mario Draghi's negative interest rates in December?

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in Business.

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That would be a small sensation: since 2014, when the then ECB President Mario Draghi introduced negative interest rates for banks at the central bank, they have been negative.

Last but not least, this encouraged the banks to also charge negative interest rates from their customers.

The ECB has so far rejected all calls to abolish negative interest rates.

Analysts from Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are now predicting two rate hikes of 0.25 basis points each for the coming months.

Commerzbank now expects the ECB to decide in March to end net bond purchases as of September and to raise interest rates by 25 basis points in September and December.

That would be the end of negative interest rates.

"The markets are currently pricing in ECB interest rate hikes of almost 0.5 percentage points by the end of the year, i.e. the end of the negative ECB deposit rate," said Jörg Krämer, chief economist at Commerzbank.

"The ECB probably wants to avoid the markets now speculating on more steps and pricing in a real rate hike process," said the economist: "Because that could weigh on the prices of government bonds in Italy, which is still vulnerable due to its unresolved economic problems - the Yield premiums on Italian government bonds compared to corresponding federal bonds have already risen.”

The capital market interest rates in Germany, measured by the yield on federal bonds with a term of ten years, remained positive on Friday.

According to Lagarde's statements, the yield rose to 0.14 percent on Thursday.

It was previously negative, but had already crossed the zero line several times in the course of the economic recovery.

On Friday it was temporarily at 0.199 percent.

There could still be setbacks, said economist Holger Schmieding from Bankhaus Berenberg, but yields should tend to “continue to strive upwards”.

The construction interest also depends on the federal bond: the brokerage portal Interhyp predicts that an increase will now also be seen here.

According to the consumer portal Biallo, the interest rates for building loans with a fixed interest rate of ten years are currently 1,

The euro appreciated against the dollar on Thursday, with one euro temporarily costing $1.14.

That strengthened a bit on Friday to temporarily $ 1.148 before there was a countermovement.

According to the so-called interest rate parity theory, higher interest rates in a currency area tend to be good for the exchange rate.

On the stock exchange, the German stock index Dax recovered briefly from its Thursday losses on Friday morning, but then continued to fall.

Rising interest rates aren't necessarily good for stocks;

lost real estate stocks, among other things.

On the other hand, stocks of banks that are expected to generate higher margins at higher interest rates were able to benefit.

In any case, Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank were able to expand their profits somewhat from Thursday to Friday afternoon.