Breakdown of the Swiss franc’s half-century status

The Swiss franc is on track for its most substantial monthly decline against the dollar in almost ten years.

The USDCHF pair chart has shown neat support on declines from increasingly higher levels since the beginning of last year. And in April, we see the bulls attempting to develop the offensive.

The pair rushes upward without any prolonged stop near 0.9500 (February-March 2021 pivot point). This increase attracts particular attention because it comes at the same time as impressive pressure on the financial markets, which rejects the idea of a weaker franc on recovery of demand for risky assets.

The USDCHF dynamics are now more like the behaviour of long-term government bond yields in the USA, where the downtrend of the last 40 years is breaking down. Interestingly, the long-term buying of the CHF in the previous 50 years has almost completely absorbed the loss in purchasing power of the USD. For a half-century to 2021, CHF has shown an average annual gain of 3.1% versus USD against an average 3.9% inflation.

Long-term bond yields, like the USDCHF, have fallen in response to globalisation and accompanying deflationary pressures. However, this trend, which is older than many of us, is about to be broken.

The 2.78% yield on 10-year US bonds is close to the turning points of 2.9% and 3.06% in 2014 and 2018. A consolidation above 3% would thus be a turning point in a trend which has lasted more than two generations. The same can broadly be said of the USDCHF. A move above 1.02 would confirm a break from the historical trend in the 1970s that tunnelled in the mid-1980s.

The FxPro Analyst Team