Is Barclays Crystal Ball Confused?
There was a time when a well known German bank had two FX price feeds showing different prices. This resulted in a bit of a feeding frenzy amongst clients, as this was a rare occassion where a bank was giving you free money (clients were able to arbitrage the bank against itself).
It was actually a bit worse, as not only were clients arbitraging the feeds, but internal prop trading desks were too. Why not? it was free money!
A perfect example of a disjointed organisation (or put more simply left hand not knowing what the right hand do’eth). Luckily the management spotted this and fixed it.
Now, long term crystal ball gazing in the currency markets is difficult enough and not really an exact science, but one would expect a bank like Barclays to have a consistent view.
I have two documents in front of me from Barclays Commercial and Barclays Wealth Management showing a 12 month view on EURGBP. One is calling at 0.7600 and the other 0.8928.
Now, it is perfectly reasonable for an organisation to have different views on the market which are sometimes contrarian, but having 1,328 pip difference is, shall we say, LARGE !
fxjunkies 