Is the Swiss stock market inversely correlated with the Swiss Franc like Japan today?
"Roughly about 1 of 2 Swiss francs is won abroad. So, yes it is easier for Swiss companies to export when the Swiss franc is not ""too high"" as it has been those last years. The main export market for Switzerland is the UE. Some companies are doing most or all of their business on the Swiss market. Others are much more exposed to the the health of the global economy. When the Swiss franc appreciates, some companies suffer a lot from that and other less. It depends on their product portfolio, competitors, and other factors. The last decades have shown that how the Swiss Franc valuation is less and less correlated with the performance of the Swiss economy. The Swiss franc is used as a safe haven when the global economy goes bad or is uncertain. In those times, the Swiss franc can be overevaluated, at least as compared to the purchasing power. When the global economy is improving, the over-appreciation of the Swiss franc tends to disapear ; this is happening now (in Mid-2017). As a summary, the Swiss franc itself is not truly correlated with the competitiveness of the Swiss economy, but more about how people in the world are anxious. In this regard, it behaves a little bit like gold."
"Yeah but a lot of people wont see it that way. Most will read the headline Burger King to avoid US taxes and then wonder why BK isnt pulling their weight when they do business inside the US.   Look at what happened when Walgreens tried this [Source](http://crooksandliars.com/2014/08/walgreens-wont-leave-usa-avoid-taxes) It didnt go over so well. Made them look unAmerican. I hate using that word but that is what it looks like.""the bulletin reported that Walgreens has decided not to “invert” the company’s nationality to become a Swiss company"" I have no idea if this will happen to BK." Flying within Europe, I have had Swiss refusing to let me take a cabin trolley and a small laptop bag on board. I'm not so worri d about pickup at the aircraft but I don't want to wait at baggage claim. "Finding statistics is exceedingly hard, because the majority of traders lose money. That is, not only they don't ""beat the markets"", not only they don't ""beat the benchmark"" (S&P 500 being used a lot as reference): they just lose money. Finding exact numbers, quality statistics and so on is very difficult. Finding recent ones, is almost impossible. With enormous effort I have found two references that might help make an idea. One is very recent, Forex ""centered"" and has been prepared by a large finance group for the the Europen Central Bank (ECB). It's available on their website, at an obscure download location. The document is stated to be confidential, but its download location has been disclosed to the public by CNBC. I can't post CNBC's link because I have just joined this Stack Exchange portal so I don't have enough reputation. You can find it by looking for their article about FXCM Forex broker debacle due to the Swiss Central Bank removing the EUR/CHF peg at 1.20. The second is a 2009-ish paper about Taiwanese retail traders profitability statistics published by Oxford University Press and talks about stocks. Both documents focus on retail traders. I strongly suggest you to immediately save those documents because they tend to disappear after a while. We had a fantastic and complete statistics report made by a group of German Banks in 2011... they pulled it off in 2012." "This is a hard question to answer.  Government debt and mortgages are loosely related.  Banks typically use yields on government bonds to determine mortgage interest rates.  The banks must be able to get higher rates from the mortgage otherwise they would buy government bonds. Your question mentions default so I'm assuming a country has reneged on its promise to pay either the principal or interest on government bonds. The main thing to consider is ""Who does not get their money?"".  In other words, who does the government decide not to pay.  This is the important part.  The government will have some money so they could pay some bond holders.  They must decide who to shaft. For example, let's look at who holds Greek government debt.  Around 70% of Greek government debt is held outside Greece.  See table below.  The Greek government could decide to default only on the debt to foreign holders.  In that case the banks in France and Switzerland would take the loss on their bonds.  This could cause severe problems in France and Switzerland depending on the percentage of Greek bonds that make up the banks' assets.  Greek banks would still face losses, however, since the price of their Greek bond holdings would drop sharply when the government defaults.  Interestingly, the losses for the Greek banks may be smaller than the losses faced by the French and Swiss banks.  This is usually the favored option chosen by government since the French and Swiss don't vote in Greece. Yields on Greek government bonds would rise dramatically.  If your Greek mortgage is an adjustable rate mortgage then you could see some big adjustments upward.  If you live in France or Switzerland then the bank that owns your mortgage may go under if Greece defaults.  During liquidation the bank will sell their assets which includes mortgages and you will probably not notice any difference in your mortgage. As I stated earlier: this is a hard question to answer since the two financial instruments involved (bonds and mortgages) are similar but may or may not be related." See the FX section of the quantitative finance SE data wiki. It's not. If you look at the page you link to and change dates, it's clear the rate changes a bit. 120.15 120.1 per hundred. The Swiss can keep the 1.200 as a target and if it's higher, sell agingst the euro to bring it down, if lower, buy. If the swiss experienced a serious financial crisis and their currency fell, they may not have the power to control it, if the rest of the world said it was worth less, you can be sure it will fall. Yes.  When the currency of a country appreciates, it benefits some groups and disadvantages others.  In particular, exporters suffer when a currency increases in value relative to other countries.  In a country like the US, where exporters are small relative to the economy, this isn't a big deal.  In germany, where exporters make up a big part of the economy, a currency increasing in value leads to large numbers of layoffs and other negative net effects to the economy. It's called carry-trade. They can borrow from governments that have 0% int rates, exchange it for dollars, and then buy u.s. treasuries. Japan would never ever raise their interest rates as their economy runs on keynesian fumes.