No Need for Safety, Franc Becomes Less Attractive

The Swiss franc dropped today against other most-traded currencies as signs of the global economic recovery and the positive changes with the debt situation in the Eurozone reduced demand for safer assets.

Ulrich Leuchtmann, the head of foreign-exchange strategy at Commerzbank AG, explained his opinion about the recent weakness of the franc:

The Swissie was quite a good safe-haven currency, especially if you wanted to flee the euro because of its short- term risks. With the short-term risks in the euro zone having abated, this shift should be unwound. We’ll see a weaker Swissie as long as we have no more event risk from the euro zone.

The ISM Manufacturing PMI rose from 53.5 in May to 55.3 in June, showing the 23rd consecutive month of the US manufacturing growth. The Markit Eurozone Manufacturing PMI was unchanged from the preliminary estimate of 52.0 in June, falling from 54.6 in May. The SVME PMI was down by 5.7 point to 53.4 in June, indicating a sharp slowdown of business activity in Switzerland.

USD/CHF climbed from 0.8402 to 0.8486 today as of 18:02 GMT and reached the intraday high of 0.8525 earlier. EUR/CHF advanced from 1.2186 to 1.2316. CHF/JPY dropped from 95.83 to 95.25.

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