Last weekend, when we reported that Germany’s Raiffeisenbank Gmund am Tegernsee – a community bank in southern Germany – said it would start charging retail clients a fee of 0.4% on deposits of more than €100,000 we said that “now that a German banks has finally breached the retail depositor NIRP barrier, expect many more banks to follow.” Not even a week later, not one but two large banks have done just that....
Read More »Swiss National Bank’s U.S. equity holdings hit record $61.8 billion last quarter
Investec Switzerland. © Vividrange | Dreamstime.com The value of the Swiss National Bank’s U.S. stock portfolio jumped to a record in June, helped by equity market gains. The holdings climbed to $61.8 billion from $54.5 billion at the end of March, according to calculations by Bloomberg based on the central bank’s regulatory filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and published on...
Read More »Swiss National Bank’s U.S. equity holdings hit record $61.8 billion last quarter
Investec Switzerland. © Vividrange | Dreamstime.com The value of the Swiss National Bank’s U.S. stock portfolio jumped to a record in June, helped by equity market gains. The holdings climbed to $61.8 billion from $54.5 billion at the end of March, according to calculations by Bloomberg based on the central bank’s regulatory filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and published on...
Read More »Brexit to have limited impact on the Swiss economy in the short term
But in the medium to long term, Swiss growth will depend on the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU While it is outside the EU, Switzerland is not immune to external shocks such as Brexit. The transmission channels are multiple (direct trade exposure, financial markets, confidence effect, political agenda…). That said, while the Swiss economy is mainly an export economy, its exposure to the UK is limited. Exports of goods to the UK represent 6% of total Swiss exports, for example, and half...
Read More »Central Bankers Around The Globle Scramble To Defend Markets: BOE Pledges $345BN; ECB, Others Promise Liquidity
There was a reason why we warned readers two days ago that "The World's Central Bankers Are Gathering At The BIS' Basel Tower Ahead Of The Brexit Result": simply enough, it was to facilitate an immediate response when a worst-cased Brexit vote hit. And that is precisely what has happened today in the aftermath of the historic British decision to exit the EU. It started, as one would expect, with Mark Carney who said the Bank of England is ready to pump billions of pounds into the financial...
Read More »In Surprising Development NIRP Starts To Work, Pushing Rich Swiss Savers Out Of Cash Into Stocks
One of the rising laments against NIRP is that far from forcing savers to shift from cash and buy risky (or less risky) assets, it has done the opposite. Intuitively this makes sense: savers expecting a return on the cash they have saved over the years are forced to save even more in a world of ZIRP or NIRP, as instead of living off the interest, they have to build up even more prinicpal. Jeff Gundlach confirmed as...
Read More »Swiss National Bank─Reactive rather than proactive
Macroview No change in base rates, but currency intervention on the cards as franc continues to strengthen Read full report hereThe Swiss National Bank (SNB) decided to leave its monetary policy unchanged at its quarterly meeting on 16 June. The main messages were unchanged from its March meeting. The target range for the three-month Libor was kept between -1.25% and -0.25%; the interest rate on sight deposits with the SNB was maintained at a record low of -0.75% and the SNB reiterated its...
Read More »“Dirk Niepelt über die Folgen eines Brexit für die Schweiz (What Brexit Means for Switzerland),” SRF, 2016
SRF, Tagesgespräch, June 16, 2016. HTML with link to MP3. Half-hour-long interview on the Swiss news channel. Topics include monetary policy, exchange rates, financial stability, Brexit.
Read More »Central Banks & Governments and their gold coin holdings
Within the world of central bank and government gold reserves, there is often an assumption that these gold holdings consist entirely of gold bullion bars. While this is true in some cases, it is not the fully story because many central banks and governments, such as the US, France, Italy, Switzerland, the UK and Venezuela, all hold an element of gold bullion coins as part of their official monetary gold reserves. These...
Read More »Swiss Reserves: Not what They Seem
This posts shows again the stupidity of the financial media, that mixes up assets and liabilities for central banks.SNB FX reserves are assets. They are in different foreign currencies and subject to the valuation effect of these currencies.Our weekly sight deposits report show the liabilities. They are measured in Swiss franc and therefore not subject to valuation effects. They are the only way to measure...
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