Two analyst notes, one worrisome story

According to ACF, the total amount of debt purchased by the ECB has doubled since the beginning of August.

“The ECB increased purchases of sovereign debt during the last week up to €13.960bn. This is comparing to the previous week’s €13.300bn. The total amount of debt purchased by the ECB has almost doubled in the last five weeks. Since the purchasing program began in May 2010 up until last August 12, the ECB had bought debt in the amount of €74bn, and just in the last five weeks it has purchased €69bn in sovereign debt. Total purchases have already reached €143bn.”

In spite of which, as analysts at Link on Tuesday pointed out, SOC GEN slides 70%, Crédit Agricole 62%, and BNP 56% from their maximum annual price levels.

“Once more, fears that Greece will not be able to overcome the sovereign debt crisis it is going through, and that it will end up infecting larger countries such as Italy and Spain, is ballasting the behaviour of European equities as well as the euro, which reached an annual minimum in relation to the US dollar. French banks, as a result of their high exposure to sovereign debt of countries that are about to be ejected such as Greece and Italy, were literally massacred by investors. In this regard, we note that the maximum annual price levels of Société Générale have dropped by 70%, Crédit Agricole 62%, and BNP Paribas 56%. Other European banks such as Commerzbank (-70%), Dexia (-61%) and Deutsche Bank (-56%) also show problems based on this analysis for the same reasons: their high exposure to sovereign debt of euro peripheral countries.”