Good opinion piece in the FT (Lex) on why Sterling probably won't fall off a cliff.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3/ba4eb78c-2...44feabdc0.html

jeez Nev... you expect him to put real money after his mouth??

Let's put it in simple words, since almost all major currencies have troubles these days, none of them is expected to fall of a cliff, relativ e to other ones.

As far as I'm concerned Dino, you're only walking the talk when you're leveraged

GBP seems to be steadily improving against CHF, despite the uncertainty caused by the general election.



I guess there are a few reasons for this:

1) The market, like the bookies, sees a good chance of there being a Conservative government with a small majority. This means higher cuts in public spending and a potential boost for the pound

2) There is an effort by the SNB to keep the Franc steady with the Euro. As the Euro comes under pressure, GBP rises relatively against EUR and CHF.

3) Good economic news from the UK: the OECD is predicting 3.1% annualised growth in Q2. The BCC is also comparatively optimistic.

1.649 the latest from XE... I arrived here in september last year @ 1.67, then it went down to 1.59 and now up again... creating a lot of headaches with my £ mortgage payments...

no suprise about the bbc really as they may as well just call themselves labours PR machine

Not the BBC, the BCC . . . the British Chambers of Commerce. Not Labour's biggest fans.

I fear it's going to get more painful for you, Walter.

oh no, no pain for me yet (thank God, I'm cool up to 2.2), but it gets messier every end-of-month budget reconciliation with the rate going up and down like a yo-yo......

How high do you think the £/chf will go? Back to the bad old days of above 2.0?

lol doh

<goes off to get some new glasses>

I'm no expert, but many analysts have been saying that sterling is undervalued (according the PPP measures). All depends on the election. I think certainly over 1.8 by the end of the year.

Ah, quit your moaning and pay off what you can in advance.

Some of us (i.e. me) had to make mortgage payments when it was 1 GBP to 2.5-2.7 CHF...

In addition, the BBC analyst was rather more sanguine about the news, highlighting the fragility of the recovery.

The BBC's impartiality is guaranteed by charter.

You can get a more bearish view from @Cashboy if you'd like.

??? I'm not moaning at the exchange rate per se, rather at the volatility of it... I thought (and I was cleraly mistaken) that the CHF would have been more stable instead of losing .05 in just over a week

Get a mortgage you can overpay and then set up a transfer assuming a 2.00 exchange rate . . . you save the excess until it reaches that level and no worry about changing amounts every month.

that's a bit difficult in Guernsey. First of all both the Missus and I have to appear in person in front of the jurats to change the mortgage, and then it'd cost us about £6k in tax just to change mortgage provider...