«Profits (therefore) do not accrue primarily to the shareholders but to the public sector,» he said, taking reference to one possible scenario of why investors suddenly put so much faith in the stock. 

Still, Studer wouldn't be drawn on a more fundamental appreciation of the development and gave a carefully reflection of the specific situation of the bank and its shareholders.

A Huge Honey Pot

More pressing is the question of when the bank will start reducing the mountain of currency reserves it has piled up in a bid to weaken the franc. The reserves, now measuring up to more than 750 billion francs, has already attracted quite some attention from hopeful politicians. Left-wing groups demanded that the bank should move some of the pile of money into a new state fund similar to the one of Norway, which is being fed by revenues from the oil and gas production. The fund would take care of all sorts of potential future worries of Switzerland, for instance a funding gap in the state pension system.

The central bank wasn’t moved – to nobody’s surprise. It had built up the assets in its quest to keep the franc from soaring. Using those reserves for specific social purposes has nothing to do with its brief.

Given such demands, starting to reduce the pile would seem an attractive proposition. The London-based «Financial Times» on Thursday wrote a piece on this issue, concluding that the sale of foreign securities at the current time made little sense because it would send out the wrong signals to the markets. The franc only just recovered to a level of 1.20 per euro – three-and-a-half years after the bank had given up its peg to the common currency at that level, a decision that had created massive price pressures for the Swiss manufacturing sector.

ECB First, SNB Second

Undoing such a positive effect for the economy with an early sell-off of foreign securities isn’t a likely proposition for the monetary policy experts at the SNB, led by their president, Thomas Jordan. His speech today focuses on monetary policy and banking regulation. He is widely expected to stick to his earlier position whereby a tightening of interest rates would be too early at the present time.

Jordan has repeatedly said that the positive development on the markets was still fragile. Analysts expect the Swiss bank to only tighten the screw once the European Central Bank (ECB) has done so, in bid not to put the franc under undue upwards pressure and to prevent any positive effect for manufacturing to dissipate.