Important snippets on today's national holiday

HUNGARY - In Brief 23 Oct 2017 by Istvan Racz

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Today is a national holiday in Hungary, the anniversary of the 1956 revolution and uprising against the Soviet rule. Markets are closed, but life goes on, as usual. Some recent and upcoming events may be important for investors, so let us look at them just briefly:1. Moody's had a revision date for its Hungarian sovereign rating (Baa3/Stable). But the agency decided to remain silent, which is one of its legitimate choices on these occasions. So the current low-investment-grade rating remains in place. This is no surprise at all - the surprise was S&P's change of its BBB- outlook to Positive in late August. The last revision date for the big three agencies will be Fitch Ratings' on November 10. We, and roughly everyone else, expects no change of their BBB-/Stable, with maybe 20-30% probability seen for an improvement of the outlook to Positive.2. Following two weeks of non-seasonally excellent weather - this happens when you are on the right side of Hurricane Ophelia - it is raining cats and dogs today in Hungary. In view of the bad weather, the leftist-liberal opposition parties have called off their joint street demonstration planned for today. This tells a lot about how serious the leftist-liberal side currently is. If they need to be afraid of people not showing up in desired numbers, then their basic political case cannot be very strong. Thinking of this, Mr. Orbán must have a pleasant afternoon today.3. Czech parliamentary elections on October 20-21 proved to be a real game changer, especially read together with the results of the Austrian parliamentary election a week earlier. In Ceská Republika, the very clear winner, with 39% of mandates, is Andrej Babis' (the ...