Aug 13, 2011

CHF to peg?

Swissy lost 2.1% against the greenback during the week, with thursday chalking up the heftiest loss in history and yesterday SNB was suspected of propping up EUR/CHF again. The threat of pegging CHF to EUR seems to be weighing on swissy sentiments for now apart from its overvaluation. Indeed pegging seems to be a last but possible scenario as SNB had been trying desperately and futilely to halt the franc's advance. Pegging would mean SNB has to give up control of monetary policy to ECB to certain extent. What rate it will be pegged and how this will be carried out technically we do not know. But one thing for sure is that the consequence for long chf traders would be dire as chf is considered severely overvalued for now. Or maybe this is just another verbal threat?
The swiss economy is showing signs of slowing growth and the continual strength of franc is detrimental to the economy. Past intervention of injecting liquidity and lowering short term interest rates to curb the franc's strength has proven to be hopelessly futile. SNB has become really desperate as market sentiment continues to deteriorate and draw flows in support of the safe haven currency. And a desperate man is capable of doing anything. Even a one time move of a temporary peg if materialised is enough to damage the franc safe haven status. Even if pegging doesn't materialise, investors are now taking in this threat ; upside for CHF can be limited while any downside will be swift and possibly disastrous.
CHF will continue to show extreme volatility in the short term. There's still considerable interest for the safe haven ccy despite the threat. I think if USD/CHF breaks past the psychological resistance of  0.8, buying interest will come in again. Take profit soon. My thought is that the desperate SNB seems ready to pay the price for a temporary peg to 'punish' the ccy speculators and it's too risky to hold CHF overnight.

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