Hi there,
I have some savings in Euro hosted by PostFinance and was wondering what shall i do: convert Euros to CHF or leave them there?
I am afraid of a Euro crash and losing all my savings.
Any (serious) advice will be highly appreciated.
Thanks,

if less than EUR100k don't bother doing anything.
If it's more then you're asking the wrong people

If you haven't already lost then it's hardly going to get worse. Unless France, Germany and all the other darn foreign nations decide to claim poverty too.

Best bet in all honesty is to put all your money in an old tin and put it right under your mattress. Unless you have a water bed, which would then not be such a good idea, because the notes would get wet and therefore not an acceptable means of payment.

Option you want to consider is not Euro to CHF as it is pegged and the Peg might get even worst (speculation is rife that it is going to be 1.3 soon).

So you might want to look at other currencies like CAD, AUD or even USD. But like someone said if any one knew the most certain answer here he would not be trolling on English Forum

Many people say the Euro was created to crash as a stepping stone to a one world currency. They say the Euro is going to be propped up until after Christmas "so the mindless masses will spend money they don't have on crap they don't need" then after it will dive into the hole. The US dollar approx 2 weeks after that. I'm still waiting on the new DM

it's less than 10K Eur, and i worked hard to save these money. So i cannot afford to lose them.

My advice is convert it to CHF if it makes you sleep better. It's true there's a good chance that the EURO could recover lost ground from here vs. the CHF and USD; however, your reality is that you can not accept the very small chance of the EURO disintegrating. This is why we have insurance.

I really wouldn't worry about EUR10k, it is likely to be guaranteed by the bank where you have it with, and even if the EUR currency fails you will likely get a different currency which is equivalent to the EUR10k you have, if I was to bet I would say that it is likely the new currency would be matched at a more favourable rate than changing to CHF now and paying a massive spread, then changing it back later to whatever currency that might be created or back to EUR even at the same rate you will lose money.

If you want to follow the advice above, let me know I might want to buy some EURs

I'm selling these cool new hats...they're adjustable to fit random people, objects and pets. PM me for details.

3 "likely" and 1 "I bet" in this quote. Sorry this is just speculation. And since when have banks ever guaranteed the purchasing power of deposits??

massive spread = 2 pips = 2 EUR on 10 000 CHF. At any number of online Swiss forex banks regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority , eg. Dukascopy and MIG Bank.

Noone can guarantee the purchasing power of anything not even CHF, and yes I was speculating and hence why I said if I was going to bet. The CHF is pegged @1.2 and I don't see why anyone would tell the OP to exchange to CHF as a hedge against the collapse of the EURO when he didn't say he actually needs CHFs.

You have no idea what you're talking about here, we've gone through these exchange rates options a gazzillion times! 2 pips? Where the hell did you see that? Non existant mate! The cheapest is 40-50pips each way (2-3pips is used by spread betting sites, which is usually laveraged at minimum 10, and you can never cash out the underlying as it's a margin account)

I think there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that the OP is exposed to CHF liabilities, why else is he worried? The PostFinance account and the OP's location being Bern is kind of a give-away.

Secondly, the CHF is not pegged against the Euro. What the Swiss central bank is doing is intervening in the currency markets, hoping to keep the tide at bay. It seems to be working just at the moment, but on the other hand, it may just be due to a temporary lull in short term EUR/CHF selling.

Like I told you, MIG BANK and Dukascopy are regulated Swiss banks, and they quote 2 pips on EUR/CHF transactions. You don't have to leverage your deposit. Sell 10 000 EUR/CHF on one of these platforms and you have fully converted your exposure from EUR to CHF, minus the 2 pips spread.

Have you exchanged any money with MIG BANK or Dukascopy?

Please read up a bit more on their site before your 'ego starts writing cheques your body can't cash'

Hi Mate

I would suggest buying USD's for the next 6 months. There is a major shortage of USD's in the Eurozone (I think its about $5Tr). So if one of these big banks go bust, which they will, they will have to de-leverage. In order to de-leverage they have to sell euros and fund their USD loans by buying physical USD's.

So the Euro is doomed, thats baked in the cake.

The CHF is a bit harder. You see the SNB chief has gone balls to the wall. He now has such a HUGE long euro position on that its damn near impossible for the CHF to go below 1.20 without collapsing the entire SNB. Think about that for a moment.

Here is a guy making HUGE bets with the countries currency. This normally wouldnt be such a big deal. But there is one unique problem: The SNB is a listed company!



The SNB has to be more transparent that most central banks and this is going to cause problems for them when they start marking their book to market.

In essence they need this crawling peg to keep going higher and higher in order for them to keep their heads above water. They need to constantly devalue their currency or their FX book (long euros) will bankrupt the SNB.

Well thats simple you say, then they SHOULD just keep printing CHF's and buy Euros with the paper. But if that happens the SNB chief will be out of a job. Share-holders dont like it when their companies share price collapses.

Notice that the SNB share price has a pretty good relationship with that of EURCHF (inverse).



Now if we zoom that in to a more recent time frame we can see that since the crawling peg with the Euro the SNB shares have traded 1:1.

So what happens if the SNB can push the EURCHF to their "leaked target" of 1.40????? SNB shares will likely have lost 50% from their recent highs.

Thats not encouraging for share-holders. If the share-holders of the SNB wanted to get long the Euro they would simply open a PostFinance account and do so. They dont need their Central bank cheif to do it for them.



People might groan me (like these people from Texas who all seem to prowl this Forum), but I would say owning USD's for the next 6 months makes more sense than Euros or CHF.

You see, that's the crux of your problem: you are assuming an exchange paper-to-paper in the wallet, I am assuming a conversion in exposure. There is a big difference between the costs associated.

I have a MIG trading account, yes.

My ego is in check thank you very much, but I am not sure yours are, judging by your aggressive tone.

Some people believe the SNB eventually will abandon the EURO wreck as a peg because Germany will return to the DM.

That's a possibility but a not so likely one in the short term.

Another set of people, including Goldman, believe that the SNB will push further devaluation of the CHF in order to improve Swiss competitiveness. They estimate the SNB will push the CHF to +1.30 to the EUR.

My personal conclusion is that the EUR is crap and that the CHF is becoming crappy too. I don't have any significant amount of money in EUR and since a couple of weeks ago, I am abandoning the CHF too.

For the time being, I am only interested in holding real asset backed stuff, like Oil, Agricultural land, Silver and Gold, in that order. I am also betting against Japanese bonds and against the European equities that should strongly go down in 2012 regardless of any kind of action the Europeans might undertake. Resistance is futile, Europe will be dis-assimilated.

I will come back to this thread in 1 year and tell everyone how wrong or right I was about this.

__________________
From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come.

What kind of an instrument are you referring to here? Is it really possible to buy an ETF contract backed by physical oil or do you have barrels in your garage ?

What I've understood is that usually these so called oil ETFs invest into short term oil futures contracts instead (meaning that their value is not guaranteed to follow the real value of oil in all conditions) or are structured as ETNs (meaning that you carry an additional counterparty risk). So basically I would assume that in extreme conditions these contracts will become valueless.

GOLD would not be devalued, well at least in the next 12 months or so.
PLUS, its value would be even increased significantly.

If I have money, GOLD is my first choice.
Good luck.

Yes, you are right. Its a matter of personal judgement what are the probabilities of 'extreme'. I use a Gold ETF that holds not contracts, but physical Gold in vaults in Switzerland. In oil I assume the risk of having ETFs based on Oil futures that roll-over. These don't follow the futures 1:1 but its close enough for me.

For the very 'extreme', I'm looking to buy agricultural land, tropical rainforest. Under 'extreme' conditions however, you still have to manage to reach that place and defend yourself.

At the end of the day, you can't be prepared for every scenario. But its good to be covered for several of them, at least the most likely ones.

Shit is coming this way, I know. I just don't know what kind. Iran? spreading? How will China & Russia react? What type and how many cells are dormant in Europe? What kind of shit do they hold? Social unrest in Europe? Who knows.

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From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come.

Small 1gramme bars of gold are a safe bet, they work out at about €60-63 each but I have bartered them for goods well worth over €100, people love shiny things especially when they are not near a computer to check rates or have no idea of the value, or in 99.99% cases would never imagine a gold swap. (keep them in the sleeves they come in with certification).

They are also very easy to store, you can't chip bits of larger bars, if you do you will lose purchasing power either by giving too much away or by ruining the original...

€50K will get you around 800 bars...

My faith in banks and money is almost non existent these days, portable barter-able wealth is king !