IN a surprisingly unexpected move, the Swiss National Bank threw in the towel on their Franc/Euro peg and threatened to move interest rates deeper into negative territory and announced a scrapping of the floor at 1.200.
The result - ABSOLUTE CHAOS across the currency markets, the oil markets and the gold markets.The result? The cross plummeted an astonishing 1400 points in the matter of 30 few minutes! Every single trader on the planet who was in that cross and expecting them to defend that floor that they have been so vocal about defending, within that brief time span, was financially obliterated.
This is what I HATE ABOUT CENTRAL BANKS - as I have said many times in the past, it is my personal opinion formed from years of trading and, I might add, from having been on the receiving end of something along this nature from the Bank of Japan at one time, Central Banks are the CHIEF CAUSE of MARKET VOLATILITY and instead of helping to create/maintain relatively calm and orderly markets, they inject disorder, chaos and devastation.
I just hope some of my readers were not trading that cross.
My take on this surprise is this - there was no reason for the SNB to do such a thing UNLESS they knew that a big bond buying program was coming from the ECB next week. Even though their interest rates were already negative, they were spending enormous amounts of their reserves in maintaining that 1.2000 peg. If the ECB were to go ahead on the bond buying/QE, the Euro would weaken ( at least that is what the market is expecting it to do and thus the reason for the strong downtrend in the common currency). A weaker Euro would exert even more pressure on the Euro/Swissie cross requiring even more ammunition to be wasted by the SNB.
Thus they threw in the towel and surrendered.
Gold certainly does like this!
The oil markets have gone beserk as a result as well.