Aggregate gross Eurosystem buying hit its highest ever level last week, some €50.528bn, as PEPP recorded its biggest week yet and PSPP buying increased in spite of a German constitutional court ruling. Gross CBPP3 purchases were also “back on track” following a surprisingly slow week.

According to data released by the European Central Bank on Monday relating to settled and outstanding purchases under its various programmes, the PEPP portfolio grew €34.097bn in the week to last Friday (8 May), €12.005bn more than the €22.092bn increase the previous week, and the biggest increase since the programme began in late March.

Gross PEPP purchases were €34.197bn and gross APP purchases €16.331bn, taking into account redemption figures released yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, which included the first under PEPP, of €0.1bn. Aggregate gross Eurosystem purchases were €50.528bn, up €18.834m on the previous (four day) week and a new weekly record.

The Eurosystem has now bought €152.908bn under PEPP in its first seven weeks of activity, and Joost Beaumont, senior fixed income strategist at ABN Amro, said that if it maintains this pace, the full €750bn of the programme will be reached by mid-October.

Gross APP purchases of €16.331bn were up €6.792bn, or around 70%, from the previous week, while the net APP increase of €10.731bn compares with a fall of €1.298bn, with redemptions some €5.3bn lower.

The APP increase includes €12.214bn of gross purchases under the public sector purchase programme (PSPP), which was the subject of a potentially restrictive German constitutional court ruling on Tuesday of last week (5 May). The PSPP buying was up €2.752bn from the previous week and ING analysts said the PEPP and PSPP purchases help underline that the ECB remains “undeterred” in its mission – a word used by ECB president Christine Lagarde and other officials in response to the ruling.

Gross CBPP3 purchases for the final week of April came in at their lowest ever level, around €69m, confounding some analysts, but last week they were “back on track” at around €1.024bn, even though the volume of eligible euro benchmarks that settled, €1bn, was down from €1.25bn the previous week.

Commerzbank analysts said that although the figures released by the ECB last week week seemed to indicate that secondary covered bond purchases under CBPP3 had come to a standstill, the latest figures suggest that was merely a brief let-up in pace, potentially attributable to month-end fine-tuning.

“The CBPP3 figures reported by the ECB earlier this week should comfort all those investors who feared that the purchase programme could be noticeably scaled down,” they said. “The CBPP3 has clearly been active in the market again, buying around €1.0bn in covered bonds.

“This is roughly in line with the pace seen since in earlier weeks and once again highlights the ECB’s flexibility in its CBPP3 purchases.”

They added, however, that due to lack of transparency with regards to purchases made under PEPP, it cannot be said whether covered bond purchases were increased across both programmes.

Following two weeks in which the CBPP3 portfolio shrank by a total of around €241m, net CBPP3 purchases for last week were also around €1.024bn, given there were no redemptions.