Our weekly forex overview goes through the United Kingdom and Switzerland in particular. Unicredit has released its crystal ball to announce the price of EUR/USD in a year. Finally, obligatory passage by the Bitcoin even if no one is of course of its status. In any case, it continues its rise in dollars, or should we say against the dollar?

(Zonebourse.com)

* No tensions, no strong CHF

There is less support for the Swiss franc, says UBS, which is supposed to be familiar with the issue. "Reducing geopolitical uncertainties related to the results of the recent US elections paves the way for greater attention to the progress of Covid vaccines. Growing confidence in a cyclical recovery can be expected to weigh on the Franc as fears of an economic deadlock subside. And although it seems premature to bet on this point today, it should be noted that the obstacles to a further significant appreciation of the franc have only increased," the bank wrote. Among these obstacles, the ECB's PEPP programme, which promotes the freezing of parities, and the SNB's policy of combating the appreciation of the CHF, which has only strengthened since it does not really have any other levers. UBS crosses this bearish vision with its "tactical" bullish vision on the GBP to assert that there is a big potential lever to exploit.

Perfect symmetry?

The beautiful symmetry

* Unicredit sees a EUR at 1.28 USD in a year.

"Risk appetite will be a key determinant for G10 currencies and we believe the USD will face more pressure," predict traders in Unicredit in their medium-term forecast, freshly released this week. They see a EUR/USD pair at 1.28 at the end of 2021. "We also expect the impact of Brexit on the UK economy to propel the EUR/GBP to 0.94," said the Italian bank, which is also targeting 1.11 on the EUR/CHF pair and sees a USD fall below 100 JPY. See you in a year to determine the acuteness of these forecasts!

* Currency or not currency?

Should Bitcoin be classified as a  currency? Is it a safe haven? A precious "metal"? Cryptocurrencies are the subject of interesting debates, but it is clear that the best known of them seems to have earned its letters of nobility since institutions have been using it. Bitcoin broke through the $18,000 mark this week, the highest since late 2017, nearly three years back. Compared to this period, what has really changed? Two things, for the manager of Robeco Jeroen Blokland. "Currently, most investors consider bitcoin to be digital gold... Moreover, unlike in 2017, there are substantial contributions from institutional players." However, Blokland recalls, "just like in 2017, bitcoins remain an extremely volatile and small asset class," or about 0.25% of the "global multi-asset portfolio," consisting of the addition of the total market capitalization of all major asset classes in the world.

Gold alone weighs 30 times more than Bitcoin. Not bad anyway for a cryptoasset that you can not even put on the tray of a scale or carry on the finger. But if prices rise, this distribution key is bound to evolve. Currently, about 18,550,000 Bitcoins have already been mined (out of the planned 21,000,000). Based on a price of USD 18,000 this represents USD 334 billion in circulation. To learn more about the use of Bitcoin in investment strategies, reread "Is it reasonable to have Bitcoin in your wallet? ".

Our road is straight, but the slope is steep (Jean-Pierre Raffarin)

"Our road is straight, but the slope is steep" (Jean-Pierre Raffarin)

* Finally, the cross-tabulation of quotes on Friday, May 20, 2020 and the evolution of the main currency pairs