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by Ashraf Laidi
Posted: Feb 20, 2010 5:00
Comments: 30765
Posted: Feb 20, 2010 5:00
Comments: 30765
Forum Topic:
EUR
Discuss EUR in this thread
Now pulled back to 0.8930ish. This is now really about EUR, but if AUD goes negative (+5 pips now) EUR might find it hard to start rally further up.
"EURUSD, GBPUSD and GBPJPY breaking last nights IMT targets."
IMT@July 22, 2010 23:52 GMT
"EURUSD ooking for fresh attempt towards $1.2970."
Not to quibble :-) but EUR/USD did not quite meet 1.2970. (1.2965 on my chart; rolling daily). Still, close, so not bad :-)
Currently in retreat, so we'll have to see how it gets on with $1.3020.
Rest assured that EU will make a mess of a simple issue
As it happened in Greek debt issue where a simple solution was so messed that ultimately a trillion dollar solution was required
Looks like the stress testing itself would also be mishandled between the various finance czars and ministers from the vairous Eu countries.
Ultimately, the europeons do manage to solve the problems but at a such a slow bureaucratic pace that gives the big hedge funds big opportunities to make directional gains. I expect the same today.
However, the underlying fact of a slowing US economy and China's endeavor to manage its trade surplus with a healthy euro and dollar rate to the yuan will allow the euro to appreciate towards and past 1.40 before the end of the year.
When the US conducte the stress test, they came up with a smart next move. The Fed distributed a large sum of money between the major banks (probably nine big banks). It was not disclosed which banks need it and which dont. Goldman did not need it but was forced to take it. Citi hugely needed it but its particular weakness was shrouded in the similar pattern of distribution to other banks like Goldman.
The Europeon test seems to mark some banks clearly that will need to raise more capital. Next, it is not clear who is going to give more capital to the needy banks? will these needy banks have to go to the capital markets? or does the ECB comes in with cheap funds? or do the national governments of the bank's principal have have to open the wallets? Or does it trigger mergers?
What about a run on a bank?
The europeon stress tests are a good idea but the initial outcome may cause more uncertainity and capital markets may get scared (again) because unlike the US Fed and treasury, no one seems to be incharge.
The ever opportunistic Sarkozy and the under siege Merkel may try to populize the topic to gain some lost ground. So another show down between these two cannot be ruled out
I do still hold the Euros I have :-)
so I guess, its a buy buy buy!!!!
Everything is fake and they are able to lie and build false figures in order to mislead the financial markets (which they hate because more or less they have a socialist mindset in which capitalism is evil)
I'm used to read this hatered rhetoric against the financial markets everyday in the newspapers. I guess it's alike in Germany, Italy, Spain and Greece of course. In the middle of the Greek storm, journalists and politicians from all EU nations were pointing their fingers to the markets, accusing them to be the actual culprit of the crisis. Never or rareley they have been able to recognize their own lack of responsibility in the deficit accumulation over the last 20 years nor their disastrous welfare policy.
Now they are building a fairy tale in which everything is OK even though the entire eurozone is falling apart. More public money will be spend for more unemployed people. Believe me, it's the magic formula that the new soviet-EU bureaucracy is going to come up with.
I guess the markets at some point are eager to buy this story because the world is tired to see the gloom and doom for almost 3 years.
So let's dream a little bit more. After all, who cares ?
None of the other 13 German banks being tested is expected to fail, despite the country's state-owned Landesbanken being seen as some of the weakest in Europe.
"Unlike in the United States, we believe that the EU stress test is unlikely to restore confidence and to underpin a strong share price rise," Roccati said.
Stress-Test Success Requires Some Banks To Fail
By SIMON KENNEDY
LONDON -- A string of banks failing the European Union's stress tests could be one of the strongest signs the process has been a success, but analysts fear the tests could end up a big disappointment, offering too little information to boost confidence.
With much of the detail about how the tests are being conducted remaining fuzzy at best, failures could be taken as a sign that regulators have factored in significant potential losses from another economic downturn.
"The market's knee-jerk reaction will be that if very few banks fail, then it has not been a stressful enough test," Nomura analyst Jon Peace said.
The problem is that a steady drip of leaks and optimistic predictions from lenders, central bankers and politicians all suggest that the vast majority of banks in even the most troubled economies are likely to pass, he added.
In recent days, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou, Irish central bank governor Patrick Honohan and his Italian counterpart Mario Draghi are just a few of the officials to express confidence that their banks will pass the tests.
"There are very few left to fail," Peace said.
One of the few banks that will reportedly fail the test is German commercial property lender Hypo Real Estate, which is already state-owned after a bailout and has access to further government support.
None of the other 13 German banks being tested is expected to fail, despite the country's state-owned Landesbanken being seen as some of the weakest in Europe.
Lenient treatment
The results will be published--both on an aggregated and on a bank-by-bank basis--by the Committee of European Banking Supervisors and national regulators Friday, scheduled for 1600 GMT after European markets have closed.
The key measure for determining which of the 91 banks fail the test--and need to raise capital--is whether their Tier 1 capital ratio would fall below 6% under the loss assumptions imposed by the test.
That's the same level that was required in the stress tests of U.S. banks, though it could be where the similarities between the two will end.
Alessandro Roccati, director at Macquarie Securities, said his firm has identified 11 banks that could need more capital, including Commerzbank (CBK.XE) and Deutsche Postbank (DPB.XE) in Germany, Sabadell in Spain and Banco Popolare (BP.MI) in Italy.
However, Macquarie expects "more lenient treatment" in the official test, which will hurt its credibility.
"Unlike in the United States, we believe that the EU stress test is unlikely to restore confidence and to underpin a strong share price rise," Roccati said.
He said the scenarios being used in the EU tests are "far from the worst case" and aren't likely to cover all trading and off-balance sheet assets. Even if the tests are tough enough and disclosure is good, there has been no clear indication of how banks would be forced to raise more cash, meaning capital raising efforts could stretch into next year.
Credit Suisse Group (CS), which isn't being tested because Switzerland isn't part of the EU but is undergoing separate Swiss stress testing, also effectively questioned the severity of the tests when Chief Financial Officer Renato Fassbind told journalists Thursday that stress tests performed by the Swiss regulator were "more than twice as severe" as their EU counterparts.
Sovereign Losses
One of the reasons so many banks are expected to pass is because of the way the tests model potential losses on sovereign bonds. The tests are assuming that the market value for government debt falls to levels similar to those seen in May, but they aren't expected to actually factor in a default by any European government.
John Raymond, a credit analyst at CreditSights, said that's significant because it would only lead to losses on bonds held on a bank's trading book, rather than those bonds that the bank intended to hold to maturity.
In the case of Greek sovereign debt, for example, as much as 90% may be held outside banks' trading books, according to research by Morgan Stanley.
Raymond said he doesn't think the markets will get the level of disclosure they want from the tests and that the only cases where regulators have something negative to say will be where there is already a solution in place.
Spain's unlisted savings banks--known as cajas--are one obvious example. The sector has been hit hard by real-estate related losses, forcing the recent seizure of CajaSur by the Bank of Spain.
Regulators, however, are testing the cajas as though extensive mergers planned for the sector had already taken place, Raymond said.
Overall, concerns
CEBS said will release aggregate results at NOON EDT; 16:00 GMT; 17:00 BST
More detailed info from national central banks will follow half an hr later.
CEBS will then have a CONFERENCE at 1 pm EDT, 17:00 GMT, 18:00 BST
Ashraf