Euro down on Thursday following comments from ECB President Mario Draghi, stocks rise on hopes of a boost in corporate earnings. FxPro's Director and Head of Research Simon Smith says a weaker euro will help the ECB expand their balance sheet.

SHOWS: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK (SEPTEMBER 25, 2014) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL)

1. FXPRO, DIRECTOR AND HEAD OF RESEARCH, SIMON SMITH, SAYING:

JOURNALIST ASKING SIMON SMITH: 'The bind that Mario Draghi and the ECB finds itself in continues, Simon.'

SMITH: 'It does. I think the issue is that they want to expand their balance sheet but they can't do it in the way that other central banks have done in terms of buying assets the way the Fed and the Bank of England do in the early part of the crisis. They tried to sort of do it, because the structure is different in the euro zone through the banking sector in terms of enticing through the TLTROs, etc. has not worked. But also banks have repaid more loans. In a sense, they're pushing on a string and I think that's Draghi's problems now. Conversely, a weaker euro does help in that scenario.'

JOURNALIST: 'How much weaker is it going to get? I mean we've seen 11 consecutive weeks of gains for the dollar index now. Now, how much weaker does the euro go?'

SMITH: 'I think the trend is still out to continue. Naturally, there could be some sort of short-term adjustment over month-end, etc. But longer term, if you want it to be longer dollar, where are you going to look? You're going to look at euro because those central banks that are wanting to push policy in the opposite direction, so you've got the euro. You've also got the Aussie and Kiwi as well because they are trying to do the same thing.'

JOURNALIST: 'Yeah. Well, let's talk about the Kiwi. There seems to be a lot of doing the rounds on the Kiwi this morning after the central bank Governor there said the level, the current levels are unjustified. This has sent the Kiwi down to what, a 12-month low. And it sort of reflects what's going on with the Aussie, right?'

SMITH: 'Yeah, this is a reflection. Both central banks in their statements at policy meetings have said in various different ways that their currencies are over value versus fundamentals, etc, just to sort of paraphrase. But it's interesting that Wheeler, the RBNZ Governor this morning was very pointed in his speech saying basically it's unjustified, the current levels of the Kiwi. So that did push it considerably low. And you have to think at this point in time, those are the currencies that have done very well out of the commodity boom especially in the Aussie over the recent years, it has naturally come off. But if you look at the pattern in commodity prices first half of the year, you could say it has held up pretty well. So I think both those currencies are vulnerable to further losses. And if you want to go long the dollar, then they look more the favoured ways to do it.'

JOURNALIST: 'Alright, very quick comment on sterling. I know Mark Carney - we haven't heard from him for a while, but he's giving a speech in Wales I think it is today. Anything set to put sterling on fire from this speech?'

SMITH: 'I don't think so. Naturally the middle of the year, he was quite pointed in the market as sort of undervaluation of risks of a tightening this year. I think even though we're seeing two members of the MPC vote for higher rates, I still think it's likely to be a stretch we see higher rates this year, more the turn of next year. So I think he's done enough to sort of upset markets for this year so I think at the moment he's probably just going to keep things steady as they are.'