Loading ...The Swiss National Bank Began Unloading its Biggest US Stock Holdings, incl. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta
The Swiss National Bank has spent years creating Swiss francs, buying dollars, euros, and other currencies with those francs, and then buying assets denominated in those currencies – including a vast portfolio of US stocks.
When the SNB was printing Swiss francs to buy foreign-currency-denominated assets, it wasn’t actually doing QE in Switzerland; it was more like doing QE in other countries.
The SNB’s purchases of US stocks – with dollars that were bought with francs that it had created out of nowhere – had a similar effect as if the Fed had bought US stocks.
So now this tiny country has a $1 trillion portfolio of foreign assets that it has purchased at essentially zero cost – meaning with money it created at zero cost – and its paper losses are just squandering some of the cream of that wondrous racket.