Wednesday, May 1, 2013

"Bank Of Israel To Double Down On Equities, Will Invest In European Stocks"

I used to think it noteworthy when foreign Central Banks or Treasuries would issue bonds in a currency other than their own.
Nowadays I'm not impressed unless the Bank's Governor can do a triple off the high bar while performing the daily open market operations.
And stick the landing.

From ZeroHedge;
Stanley Fischer, who cost his central bank a lot of money with his ill-timed bet to invest billions of the Bank of Israel's foreign  currency reserves on names such as Apple last year, has demonstrated that Einstein's definition of insanity is alive and well when it comes to central-planners, has just decided to double down on stocks. Alas, this is not a joke.

 Bloomberg reports that "The Bank of Israel plans to almost double equity holdings by the end of the year after falling bond yields prompted the central bank to invest in European shares for the first time. The bank will increase its stock holdings to as much as 6 percent of foreign-exchange reserves, or about $4.5 billion, from 3 percent at the end of 2012, according to Yossi Saadon, a Bank of Israel spokesman.

Investments in shares rose to about 4.5 percent of assets in the first four months of 2013 as the institution made a “small allocation” to European equities in addition to its U.S. funds, he said." Well, if the BOI's investment in AAPL was the beginning of the end for that company, one can start shorting Europe - an academic Keynesian just called the top....MORE
It's the sticking the landing that's going to be tough.
Shoulda bought Japan Stanley.