The European crisis is at a key point this week, and there are meetings galore on resolving it. Here's how to ride them out.
The Europeans seem to be making alphabet soup these days: the ECB is meeting, an EU summit is looming, we just finished the Ecofin get-together...and so on.
Slowly but surely, though, progress is being made, and the analysts at Barclays Capital are guardedly positive on the euro. All the meetings "will therefore be an important step forward which we believe will lower the risk premium on European currencies in particular. And given current pessimism and short positioning, we are constructive on risk," they wrote in a note to clients.
That said, they are not recommending trades using the euro. The European Central Bank meeting "is unlikely to improve risk sentiment while chipping away at the EUR's interest rate advantage," they say. And if investors are disappointed by the pace of progress toward an end to the crisis, there is major downside risk in the single currency.
Investors are better off buying the dollar against the Swiss franc, the Barclays Capital analysts say. "We prefer being long USDCHF, a trade which will perform well as euro area progress is made, as well as if a tail scenario ensues." They recommend entering the trade around 0.92 with a stop loss at 0.90 and a target of 0.98.
Your move.
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