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On the development of the SEK exchange rates & bond yields in February 2024
We analyse the development of the SEK exchange rates and bond yields in February 2024. We do so by using a Power BI report that is available in our Portfolio.
February 2024 overview
We start by going to this page and changing the Date filter in the filter menu. This is only accessible to us as the report creators. We do the filtering because otherwise the report will think that we are in March, hence the month-to-date (MTD) values will be incorrect as an example. This page is a summary view of the SEK exchange rates & bond yields, and comparisons against large currencies like GBP, EUR and USD can be seen.
The filtering in Power BI looks like below.
We then see that in February, the SEK strengthened against all the currencies in the report. It strengthened the most – by 3% – against Swiss franc (CHF) and Japanese yen (JPY). In our blog post about the January 2024 SEK development, we noticed that SEK only strengthened against one currency – the JPY.
In general, there were no dramatic changes in February, just like in January. The SEK movements were in the range from -1% to -3%. It can be noted here that + means that SEK weakened, and – means that SEK strengthened. For example, if the EUR-SEK exchange rate goes from 10 to 11, that +1 change is a weakening of the SEK.
When looking at the quarter-to-date (QTD) and year-to-date (YTD) values, which are the same in the first quarter, we see that the SEK movements are within the range -4% (strengthening) to +2% (weakening), and again it has strengthened the most against JPY and CHF. It has weakened the most against GBP and USD – by 2%.
We also note that there were large changes to the bond yields in February, not only to the SEK bond yields. We see that the GBP 5 years and USD 5 years bond yields increased by 34 respective 43 bps. The SEK 5 years yield increased by approximately the same value – by 39 bps.
For SEK, we read several different bond yields, and we notice something interesting for the 2 years and 10 years yields development in February. The SEK 2 years yield increased by 42 bps, but the 10 years yield only increased by 28 bps. That is a 14 bps difference. Hence, the so called “bond spread” between the 2 years and 10 years yields, decreased by 14 bps in February.
To get further insight on the bond yields, we go to this page and change the Year filter to range from 2023 to 2024. We see that there is a clear increase in all the SEK bond yields in February 2024.
Finally, we go to this page and click on February in the table. By doing so, the Power BI page will be updated with February as a filter. We then see the more exact numbers of the SEK strengthening in February.
For example, some highlighted changes are the following SEK movements:
- Strengthening against JPY by 3.2%
- Strengthening against CHF by 3.1%
- Strengthening against CAD by 2.2%
- Strengthening against NOK by 2.1%
Summary
In February 2024, there were no dramatic changes of the SEK exchange rates compared to major currencies like GBP, EUR and USD. The SEK strengthened against many of the large currencies, for example it strengthened by 3.2% against JPY and 3.1% vs CHF.
With regards to bond yields, there were larger changes both for the SEK yields and other bond yields like USD and GBP. For example, the SEK 5 years yield increased by 39 bps, which can be compared to +43 bps for USD and +34 bps for GBP.
