Fog in the spring

If you had imagined a few weeks ago that the central banks were actually considering lowering monetary policy and raising interest rates instead of tightening them, then you would have ended up rather disappointed. The lack of clarity from forward indices and the official statements of central banks (which, in the case of the biggest of them all, the US Fed, comprise announcements of stern decisions to come) have demonstrated that monetary policy can wreck the mood on stock markets. At the beginning of May, US interest rates rose to the highest they have been since 2007 and the accompanying statements left little doubt that the world’s most important central bank intended to continue its battle against inflation, thus clearing the way for other financial institutions to do the same. The Polish economy was also sending out mixed signals. It appears that industrial production has bottomed out (in April, total production fell by 6.4 pct – the biggest drop since May 2020 durin