No Need for Safety, Swiss Franc Suffers

Commodities and global equities recovered today from the last week’s sharp decline, signaling that investors became less interested in safe assets. Such shift of market sentiment harmed the Swiss franc.

Concerns about the sovereign-debt problems of Greece and the whole European Union subsided somewhat after the spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that a restructuring of Greece’s debt wasn’t considered the EU official said the progress of Greece in fixing its economic issues is being studied. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.5 percent and the MSCI World Index gained 0.7 percent. The Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of raw materials advanced 1 percent, following the 9 percent drop last week, the biggest decline since December 2008.

The economic data from Switzerland itself also wasn’t beneficial for the franc. The nation’s consumer prices rose only 0.1 percent in April compared to the forecast value of 0.5 percent. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs reported that its consumer confidence index dropped dramatically from 10 in January to -1 in April.

USD/CHF rose from 0.8716 to 0.8805 and EUR/CHF advanced from 1.2521 to 12681 today as of 19:59 GMT. CHF/JPY went down from 92.15 to 91.77, while it reached the intraday low of 91.48 earlier.