Thursday, January 15, 2015

Swiss Central Bank loses big


via MarketWatch:
LONDON (MarketWatch) — The Swiss National Bank took financial markets by surprise on Thursday, when it scrapped its euro exchange cap and lowered interest rates.
The move sent shock waves through the currency and stock markets, with the Swiss franc CHFUSD, +13.92% rallying more than 30% against the dollar and euro CHFEUR, +15.78% at one point.
According to Citibank's Stephen Englander,
By our calculation the FX reserves portfolio on FX alone will have lost in the region of 60bn CHF, assuming EURCHF at 1.03 and USDCHF at 0.88. Though some of this is likely to have gained on bond holdings, as per our above example, this would be far outweighed by losses on FX.
That's about $66 billion cost for another central planning failure.

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