In football terms this would be described as a bore draw
Not a lot to take in from the announcement. The members saw no material change in domestic or international factors since the Nov meeting
They looked over the impact of any reaction to the FOMC hiking, "as is widely anticipated" but came to no real conclusions
One of the stand out comments was on household balance sheets;
"Against the backdrop of the continuing fiscal consolidation, and in view of the likelihood of increases in interest rates over time, the Committee considered the resilience of household balance sheets. According to the survey conducted on behalf of the Bank by NMG Consulting during September (and therefore pre-dating the latest announcements), around two thirds of households had expected to be affected by further fiscal consolidation. Around 60% of respondents had expected Bank Rate to be higher than 0.5% by September 2016. Over the past year, the survey suggested that there had been a modest improvement in mortgagors' balance sheet positions. The proportions of households with high mortgage debt to income and debt servicing ratios had fallen, while both mortgagor and renter households had considered unsecured debt payments less of a burden than a year earlier. In part, that was likely to have reflected increased household incomes over that period. Higher interest rates would increase the financial pressure on some households, but given the modest improvement in household balance sheets over the past year, households had appeared a little better placed to cope with a possible rise in interest rates."
The bank is mindful about the effects of rate hikes news that people are better prepared for them will be welcome
On wages they looked at the affect of the drop in average hours on flattening pay growth but saw that as transitory and nothing much to affect inflation. On the inflation front they said that the lower CPI may be playing into wage negotiations
Overall there's nothing much to take from this and the softer pound looks more like a case of "nothing to buy on, so we'll sell it instead", rather than getting any real dovish comments to sell on. We're down to the 1.5117/25 level I highlighted in my preview so we'll see how that does ahead of 1.5100