In this way, quarterly adjustments to the pace of PEPP purchases could be interpreted as signalling a revision to the overall expected stock of purchases, thereby influencing yields through the well-established stock channel of quantitative easing.
As already noted in the discussion of Charts 7 and 8, the right panel of Chart 9 shows the quarterly evolution of the risk-free rate and the sovereign spreads. During 2020, the decline in the risk-free rate and the stabilisation of sovereign spreads meant that PEPP purchases decelerated quite quickly during the summer of 2020.