This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Swiss National Bank Slammed For Massive Valeant Loss; Adds Another 900,000 Apple Shares In Q3
Six months ago we were surprised to learn that the Swiss National Bank - a central bank - had been one of the biggest buyers of AAPL stock in the first quarter, when it added 3.3 million shares to its existing position, or 60%, bringing the total to 9 million shares, for a grand total of $1.1 billion.
Then three months ago, in its Q2 13-F update, this number rose to $1.2 billion when the SNB added another 490K shares in its top position.
Overnight, the SNB which unlike the Fed and the other "serious" central bank hedge funds, released a 13-F updating on its latest stock portfolio.
We learned that in the quarter in which AAPL stock tumbled to $92 during the August 24 ETFlash crash, and has since then rebounded once again (perhaps courtesy of SNB buying) the Swiss money printing authority which reported a record $20 billion loss in the second quarter, and a record $52 billion in the first half, added another 909,000 AAPL shares, bringing its new grand total to 10.3 million shares, however due to the decline in AAPL's price, its dollar-equivalent value declined to $1.1 billion as of Sept. 30.
Asside from AAPL, the SNB was busy buying many other stocks as well, and as of Q3 its total equity AUM increased from $37.5 billion to $39.9 billion even as most equity prices declined substantially in the interim period.
Among the SNB's top holdings there were few changes, and are shown in the chart below, with AAPL by and far the biggest holding of the Swiss central bank.
However one of its stocks that has caused major headaches for the monetary authority is the one highlighted in position 24: Valeant, of which the SNB held 1.442 million in Q3, having added 165,300 shares in the second quarter as we pointed out last week:
The Swiss National Bank owns 1,276,960 VRX shares
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 30, 2015
It is this stock which has crashed in the interim period, and which was down another 8% as of this moment to a new 2 year low...
... that has raised some questions. Here is the Swiss Finanz and Wirtschaft:
On one item the SNB is likely to have little joy: the shares of Valeant have plummeted around 46% since the end of September. This burdened the portfolio of the National Bank which sat on 1.4 million shares of the pharmaceutical conglomerate. The securities even ranked ahead of Intel and Wal-Mart Stores among the twenty-five largest positions. Measured against the current price of $ 95.41 so that resulted in a book loss of nearly $120 million.
Make the current price $85.
How long until the Swiss population takes an activist hammer to the SNB's "passive" holder nail and demands that the central bank dump the stake before it creates even more "austerity" for Switzerland: recall that if the SNB does not generate profits on its portfolio, it has no cash to distribute to the Swiss cantons, leading to angry protests from the local population which has gotten used to this explicit central bank subsidy.
- 1859 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -





Now you know why the Fed won't show you what's on it's balance sheet. Theirs looks no better.
If at first you don't succeed, double down, double down, double down.
Hope the SNB goes tits up. horrible, horrible example of a horrible, horrible institution.
Well hypocrites criticizing the Valeant position but not their other stock holdings will not stop them...
....until the gambling house takes you out back and passes you around while threatening your children.
exactly, it's not like they used "real money" to buy those positions. Just print moar and buy moar.
Besides, equity "losses" are just the newest version of "sopping up excess liquidity."
And pretty soon they own all of Apple Inc., sweet gig if you think about it.
Now you know why folks, in ye olde times, expressly forbid central banksters from owning equities.
One day the central bankers will announce that while in a legal sense what you are holding are their liabilities, in reality they are *your* liabilities in the practical sense.
Andy Hofman did a nice rant extrapolating this out until the central banks own the entire stock market (BOJ owns more than 50% of ETFs for example leading to suspension of buying or selling of the 2X long Nikkei fund)
"What will they do then? Create new companies and fund them so they can issue shares so the central banks can buy their stock?"
I weep to know we will soon find out.
My kids are in Middle and High school; they informed me of something about Apple last night...
In a nutshell:
1. Apple has had the "education" business locked up forever!
2. Our middle and High schools still buy Apple, but they are also buying ChromeBooks!
3. My Kids, yes the next generation!, say that "Apple Sucks" when it comes to working on school projects.
Why?
Google Drive! Because it stores their projects in the cloud..so no matter where they are, they have access to it!
Check this out..I would not be stocking up on Apple Stock until after this plays out...
Chromebooks Gaining Popularity in School Districts"Barely a blip on educators' radar screens as recently as 2012, the inexpensive, Web-based laptop computers accounted for nearly one-third of all mobile-digital-device sales to schools in the United States in the first half of this year"
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/11/12/12chromebooks.h34.html
I'm going to guess Apple will add cloud services to their devices sooner or later, as it's the "next big thing."
But wait for when they link their Tesla knock-off iCars with cloud technology and you can can go anywhere instantly through the cloud! ??? Maybe that won't work... but it works on StarTrek so BUY MOAR!!
I bet it is worse.
They are probably buying a lot more of the worthless stocks....
I am sure they held lots of Radio Shack, Sears, and other great investments...
Maybe it's just me but the stock "markets" as lifeboats seems, to put it gently, like not such a great plan.
So they lost a combined total of $72 billion? It's not like the Swiss could do anything with that money to begin with. I'm sure everything is perfect and they have no needs in that country. Things are so great that they should probably host ,oar "refugees" to share in the prosperity.
Cheer up, Doc MyRA accounts went live yesterday. I don't know if you read about how they work yet but suffice it to say, people in our line of work are in no danger from them.
I was discussing Myra's yesterday. I'll be willing to bet that they become popular after the advisor fiduciary rule goes into effect. Most people will go to fee based and small investors will have no place to go but the MYra.
Can I buy a cheeseburger with myra?
I'm thinking Puppy Chow.
Soylent Green.
The circle is now complete....
There will be no broad advisor fiduciary rule. MAYBE they expand it to cover BD guys in the area of IRA roll-overs, but the rest is still going to be the wild west for them.
The rule is already set to go into effect for qualified money in 2017. CONgress has introduced legislation to postpone that but El Presidente will veto.
That's a long way off. Lots can happen.
"oar refugees".......that's almost apropos since they boated across the Mediterranean to get to Europe
$72 billion loss on the digital side; that can be fixed very easily. They short their stock, make the announcement and the stock goes down, the shorts are sold for gain and everything is even again...of course all on free-margin.
Swiss watchmakers' retirement funded by I-watch sales
So, let me get this straight. The SNB works like the world's largest 401k plan (managed by monkeys throwing darts, apparently).
Which begs the question. Why does a fucking national bank own stocks?
Because they can; the better question is how do they get it with fiat-thin-air money? Lying is the gateway to all other sins. We are all sinners and that will be the ultimate problem for EACH person since this life is a mere shadow of the real substance, which is in the eternal state yet to come; unless you are already dead.
so they are printing money to pump up stocks they own?
No conflict there....I guess this is what they mean by "wealth effect".
Because they aren't just the country's central bank, they're also it's sovereign wealth fund.
and the other question of why they have minimal physical gold, re: the failed referendum to rebuy the gold it sold a while back.
Its a pretty clear message-they have to buy stocks not gold. US stocks.
SNB extracts interest from those buying Swiss short-term debt instruments w/ neg yields, uses said interest (levered 10x) to BTFD in AAPL.
Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
Somehow the people of the world don't question central banks, whose stated puspose is to keep employment high and keep prices "stable", while they buy publicly traded corporate stock to maintain solvent balance sheets. People don't wonder why the banks need to bloat their balance sheets so. The answer of course is because the massive debt on the other side of the balance sheet is there because no one else will buy it. And now that they own all the stock in the world no one has the money to buy them either.
So of course if they even decide to sell any of these "assets", which they won't, then there won't be any buyers. This is why the world's fiat has been slowly hyperinflating. Prices go up up up until people can't afford rent, food, and clothes. But hey, as long as football is on, who needs clothes?
SNB.
LMFAO!!!
Given the way it's been performing the last couple of days, I reckon they've gone long Google...sorry, Alphabet.
DavidC
The Swiss pleebs voted against the gold, so now it's Valeant and Crapple what's on the menu.
They better had bought 900,000 real apples, make candy apples and freeze them for a rainy day.
FUK U, SNB FANBOIZ!!!!!! BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is what national banks are reduced to...print money to buy stocks? Can I introduce them to Enron, MCI, LEHMAN, Fannie and a host of stock DISASTERS? WTF!!!!
Oh, the cantons are not unaware of the problem.
Unhappy at the prospect of having to borrow money to pay for the goodies required to make "asylum seekers" less likely to set off bombs in Swiss town centres, they have convinced 100,000 low-info voters to support a ballot issue that would stop Swiss banks from lending out CHF deposits, effectively creating money.
http://www.vollgeld-initiative.ch/english/
If the plan was to return the right to issue money to the Swiss people, I'd be all for it. The real plan, of course, is to give the SNB a monopoly over issue of money. Then, the cantons think, the SNB can simply print money to pay for all the goodies the "asylum seekers" want.
That will be just fine with UBS and Credit Suisse, who will simply move their CHF money printing operations offshore.
The real losers will be normal Swiss folk who will have to deal with the consquences of rampant inflation.
Just waiting for the black swan to arrive in AAPL. I sense a VAG moment.
Seems to be a slight conflict in interest going on here. The Global Central Bank Cartel literally already owns the world. We are all completely fucked.
I hope SNB is getting in on the 'class' action https://steinmeyerlaw.com/valeant-pharmaceuticals-vrx/
I liked the days better when Central Banks weren't Hedge Funds
There's something going on - it's in the air - can anyone else feel it??
That's just the effects of the chemtrails and fluoridated water. Back to the electric jew for programming.
So, rather than the central banks as intentionally evil, we have the central banks as the bigger fool, and last sucker in line?
Sort of makes sense when their real experience is generally academic.
Per modern accounting, data is suspect if only that it does not include confidential side-letters.
So, who really knows the indicators of omitted data? And what does that say about certainty?
Private arrangements are often part of transactions that will forever remain undisclosed; such is the nature of real-world business since written records began.
Side-letters and unlimited variations of "wink wink" and "coinkydink" are not limited to the principals in a transaction. Anyone/anything privy to even part of an event can be in the player=pool.
That's life. Insider-trading is impossible to eliminate, though limits to public harm can be established , but have not been as of 2015 A.D.
Personally, I am quite reassured to know that such excellent stock pickers are also responsible for maintaining the value of my money.