How to Trade EUR/CHF: The SNB, the Franc and Gap Risk

Educational content. This article explains what drives EUR/CHF and how the pair behaves as a CFD on the MT5 platform, including the central-bank gap risk that sets it apart from other crosses. It does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation. CFD trading carries significant risk of loss and may not be suitable for all investors.

EUR/CHF is the euro against the Swiss franc. It quotes how many francs one euro buys, and at the Vanto feed snapshot of 10 October 2026 the price was about 0.930. The pair is driven by the Swiss National Bank (SNB), by franc safe-haven demand and by the ECB. Its history of central-bank gaps, above all 15 January 2015, makes position size more important than on most pairs.

This guide covers what the price means, how the SNB shapes it, what the 2015 floor removal did, how a gap interacts with margin and stop-out, and what the Vanto specifications look like. It does not forecast a direction.

What EUR/CHF Means and How It Is Built

EUR/CHF is the price of one euro in Swiss francs. The euro is the base currency and the franc is the quote currency. A price of 0.93 means one euro buys 0.93 francs, so the franc is worth more than the euro. If the price rises, the euro is stronger against the franc; if it falls, the franc is stronger.

For a CFD, that sets the direction of the position. Buying EUR/CHF gains when the euro strengthens against the franc, and selling EUR/CHF gains when the franc strengthens. The same weakening euro or strengthening franc would hurt a buyer.

Why EUR/CHF equals EUR/USD times USD/CHF

EUR/CHF is a cross pair, so its price is the product of two dollar pairs. The Vanto feed shows it directly: EUR/USD at 1.12014 multiplied by USD/CHF at 0.83009 gives 0.92982, against an EUR/CHF bid of 0.92986 (Vanto feed snapshot, 10 October 2026). The small difference is rounding and the spread.

The consequence is that the dollar cancels out. A rise in EUR/USD alone lifts EUR/CHF only if USD/CHF does not fall by the same proportion. A broad dollar sell-off pushes EUR/USD up and USD/CHF down at the same time, and the two effects offset, which is why EUR/CHF often looks calm on days when both dollar pairs move sharply. The general mechanism is in forex cross pairs explained.

Two pairs on the same franc leg are covered separately: how to trade USD/CHF for the dollar side, and how to trade EUR/USD for the euro side.

Why Is the Swiss Franc a Safe Haven?

The franc is a safe haven because Switzerland has a large current-account surplus, low inflation, a long record of political and monetary stability, and a currency that investors buy when they want to leave risk. In stress, money tends to move into francs, and EUR/CHF falls.

That demand is not constant, and it is not the whole story. A strong franc raises the price of Swiss exports and pulls Swiss inflation down, which is why the SNB treats franc strength as a policy problem. EUR/CHF is therefore a pair where a market flow (safe-haven buying) meets an institution that has repeatedly acted against it.

What Does the Swiss National Bank Do to EUR/CHF?

The SNB moves EUR/CHF through three tools: its policy rate, direct purchases or sales of foreign currency in the market, and explicit exchange-rate commitments such as the 2011 floor. Of the three, the second and third act on the exchange rate itself, which is unusual among major central banks.

• Policy rate. A lower Swiss rate narrows or reverses the yield advantage that makes the franc attractive, and a higher one widens it.
• Foreign-exchange intervention. In its policy statements over many years the SNB has repeatedly said it is willing to be active in the foreign exchange market as necessary. That wording is a standing reminder to traders that the franc is not a free-floating currency in the way the dollar is.
• Exchange-rate floor. The 1.20 floor is the extreme case and is covered in the next section.

The exchange rate is therefore part of the SNB's stated reasoning, and not only an outcome it observes. The general mechanism of how central banks move currencies is in forex central banks explained, and the tone of their communication is explained in hawkish vs dovish.

What Happened to EUR/CHF When the SNB Removed the Floor?

EUR/CHF fell from about 1.20 by roughly a quarter or more within minutes on 15 January 2015, when the SNB discontinued the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro with immediate effect and without prior warning. It is the textbook case of a pair that is quiet for years and then gaps by a quarter of its value.

The sequence, from the SNB's own account of the decision, was as follows:

1. The SNB introduced the 1.20 floor on 6 September 2011 and committed to enforce it by buying foreign currency in unlimited quantities.
2. By January 2015 the SNB judged that the floor could only be held through permanent interventions of rapidly increasing magnitude, which made it no longer sustainable.
3. On 15 January 2015 the SNB discontinued the floor and lowered the interest on sight deposit balances to -0.75%, saying the international environment for its monetary policy had changed dramatically (SNB, speech of 24 April 2015).
4. The announcement came between regularly scheduled assessments and surprised markets. The price fell sharply within minutes and recovered part of the fall later the same day. Reported intraday lows differ by data source, from roughly 0.85 to roughly 0.90, so no single low is stated here.

The size of the move depends on the measure used. For illustration, a fall from 1.20 to 0.90 is 25%, and a fall from 1.20 to 0.85 is 29.2%, so the figure varies with the low taken.

Why a floor creates the gap

A floor does not remove risk; it stores it. While the SNB defended 1.20, the market priced almost no downside, so volatility was very low and positions grew large. When the commitment ended, there was no price between the old level and the new one at which anyone was willing to trade, so stop-loss orders were filled far from their set levels or not at all. The mechanism is the same as in slippage in trading, taken to its extreme: the gap was the slippage.

The 1.20 level is now about 29% above the Vanto snapshot price of 0.92986. The SNB no longer defends it, and no floor is announced. The episode matters today as a record of what the pair is capable of, and not as a statement about what the SNB will do next.

EUR/CHF Today: The Price After the Floor

EUR/CHF has traded well below the old floor since 2015. On 14 November 2025 FXStreet reported it near 0.9188, its lowest since the floor was removed, during a global equity sell-off that pushed investors into the franc (FXStreet, 14 November 2025). At the Vanto snapshot of 10 October 2026 it was about 0.930.

Two features define the regime since 2015:

• Slow drift with a downward bias in the franc's favour. Over the long run the franc has tended to strengthen against the euro, which is why the pair is often described as "grinding lower". That is a description of the past, and not a prediction.
• Sharp reactions to safe-haven shocks. Equity sell-offs, geopolitical events and euro-area political stress have repeatedly moved the pair down faster than its usual pace.

Because the move per day is usually small, traders sometimes assume EUR/CHF is a low-risk pair. The next sections show why that inference fails once leverage is added.

EUR/CHF Specifications on Vanto

One lot of EUR/CHF is 100,000 euros, has a pip value of CHF 10, and locks about USD 224 of margin at the 1:500 forex cap. The table shows the Vanto feed figures for EUR/CHF next to EUR/USD.

Source: Vanto feed snapshot, 10 October 2026. Pip value in USD uses the USD/CHF bid of 0.83009. Prices and spreads change continuously.

Three points follow from the table.

Margin is the same as EUR/USD. Margin is calculated on the notional value in the account currency, and both pairs have 100,000 euros as the base. With a USD account, both lock 100,000 multiplied by the EUR/USD price (1.12014), divided by 500, which is USD 224.03. The Swiss side of the pair does not enter the margin calculation.

Pip value is higher than USD 10. The quote currency is the franc, and one franc is worth more than one dollar (1 USD buys 0.83009 CHF). A CHF 10 pip is therefore USD 10 divided by 0.83009, or about USD 12.05. The conversion changes slightly as USD/CHF moves. The concept is explained in what is a pip and what is a lot.

The spread is relatively wider than on EUR/USD. In the snapshot the EUR/CHF spread, measured as a share of the price, was about 2.8 times that of EUR/USD. A single snapshot is not representative, so treat it as the direction of the difference: a cross is normally more expensive to trade than the most liquid major, and the gap widens in thin hours. The concept is explained in what is the spread.

How Much Does a Move Cost on EUR/CHF?

A pip on EUR/CHF is only about 0.011% of the price, so the pair needs many pips to produce a meaningful percentage move, and each pip costs more than on EUR/USD. Using the snapshot figures, the table converts movement into money for common lot sizes.

Source: Vanto feed snapshot, 10 October 2026. A 1.5% move of 0.92986 is 0.01395, or 139.5 pips; USD values at USD/CHF 0.83009.

A move of 139.5 pips on one lot is CHF 1,395, which converts to about USD 1,680. This is a floating gain or loss depending on the direction, before spread and swap. Leverage amplifies losses as well as gains: the same USD 224 margin that controls the position does not limit the loss.

Gap Risk Against Margin and Stop-Out

Margin is a deposit, and not a limit on loss. A position loses on its full notional value, so a large gap can exceed both the margin and the account balance. The tables below show how far EUR/CHF has to move to hit the 50% stop-out, and what a gap of the size seen in 2015 would mean.

How far to the stop-out?

At Vanto the margin call is 100% and the stop-out is 50% on both account types. Positions begin to close automatically when equity falls to half of the used margin. The concept is explained in what is the stop-out level.

The distance to the stop-out is: (balance minus half of the margin) divided by the pip value. For one lot on a USD 1,000 balance: half of USD 224.03 is USD 112.01, so the loss that triggers the stop-out is USD 1,000 minus USD 112.01 = USD 887.99. At USD 12.05 per pip, that is 73.7 pips, or 0.8% of the price.

Source: Vanto feed snapshot, 10 October 2026. Calculation for a single long position, ignoring spread and swap.

The table shows the same number from two sides. A trader who thinks of EUR/CHF as a slow pair may open one lot on USD 1,000 because the margin is only USD 224, and then be stopped out by a 0.8% move, which is small compared with the gaps in this pair's history. The margin looked small, but the stop-out distance was the real constraint.

What a 2015-sized gap would do

A gap is a jump between two prices with no trading in between, so a stop-loss cannot execute inside it. The table applies falls to the snapshot price for one long lot.

Source: Vanto feed snapshot, 10 October 2026, long position from 0.92986. Illustration of arithmetic, not a scenario forecast.

A 30% fall is of the same order as the 25 to 29% fall from 1.20 to the reported intraday lows of January 2015. On one lot, the loss in that case would be about 150 times the USD 224 margin. Even half a lot on USD 5,000 would not survive a 10% gap without a stop-out, and a gap cannot be exited at the stop-out level, because the price skips it.

This asymmetry is the reason EUR/CHF is the pair where position size should be set from the gap, not from the daily range. A 1:500 cap allows far more notional than the account can absorb in this kind of event. For the leverage mechanics see what is leverage in trading and what is margin in trading.

Overnight Swap on EUR/CHF

In the Vanto feed a long EUR/CHF position has a positive swap sign and a short position a negative one. The signs come from the rate gap between the euro and the franc, with the broker's financing adjustment included, and they can change when rates change.

The pattern across the franc crosses in the feed is consistent: AUD/CHF, CAD/CHF, EUR/CHF, GBP/CHF, NZD/CHF and USD/CHF all show a positive long sign and a negative short sign, because the franc is the low-yielding side. CHF/JPY, where the franc is the base, shows the opposite. Swap rates are not quoted here because they change, and the sign pattern is what stays stable. See what is swap in trading for the mechanism.

Two consequences matter for EUR/CHF:

• Carry is a slow, steady credit or charge, and the price risk is not. A positive long swap is small compared with the loss from a franc move, which is why the carry logic in the carry trade explained applies here with the usual warning: the carry unwinds when risk sentiment turns, and the franc is the currency that is bought in that unwind.
• Triple swap is charged on Wednesday. All forex pairs at Vanto charge three days of swap on Wednesday to cover the weekend settlement. The mechanism is in what is the triple swap day.

When the EUR/CHF Relationships Break

EUR/CHF's usual patterns fail in a small number of identifiable situations. Knowing them is more useful than any pattern.

The pair does not always fall when risk sentiment falls. Safe-haven flow is a tendency. When the euro itself is the source of stress, such as a euro-area political or banking crisis, EUR/CHF can fall for euro-specific reasons, with no global risk-off move at all. In a global dollar-driven sell-off, the franc and the euro may rise or fall together, and the cross barely moves.

The SNB can act without a signal. The 2015 decision came at an ordinary time, not at a scheduled assessment. The SNB's regular assessments are in the calendar, and they matter, but the largest EUR/CHF move on record did not follow one. Treat scheduled dates as a minimum list of event risks.

A stop-loss is not a guarantee. On a gap, the stop-loss converts to a market order at the next available price. This is also the failure mode for weekends. The relevant behaviour of orders is in what is a trailing stop.

Low volatility is not low risk. A quiet pair produces long periods in which a large position feels safe. The risk is in the tail, and the stop-out table above shows the daily-range mindset can mis-size the position by an order of magnitude.

Hedging does not remove gap risk. Vanto accounts use MT5 hedging mode, in which a long and a short position on the same symbol are held as separate positions. Holding both is not the same as being flat, because each leg has its own spread and swap, and the margin treatment for opposite positions is not covered here. See hedging vs netting in MT5.

What Moves EUR/CHF: A Checklist of Drivers

The drivers fall into five groups, and the SNB sits on top of the rest. The table summarises where each acts and how it shows up.

For an ECB-driven cross without the franc, see how to trade EUR/GBP. Swiss data and SNB communications arrive in the European morning; the overlaps are in forex trading sessions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is EUR/CHF a good pair for beginners?

EUR/CHF moves slowly on most days, but its tail risk is larger than its daily range suggests. The 2015 floor removal moved the pair by roughly a quarter or more within minutes, so a beginner should size the position from a gap, and not from a typical day, and should use a demo account first.

Why does EUR/CHF fall when markets panic?

EUR/CHF falls in a panic because investors buy francs as a safe haven, and the franc strengthens against the euro. The effect is a tendency, and it can be offset when the stress comes from the euro area itself or when the SNB intervenes.

What is the pip value of EUR/CHF?

One pip on one lot of EUR/CHF is CHF 10, which was about USD 12.05 in the Vanto feed snapshot of 10 October 2026. The USD value changes with USD/CHF, and the pip value scales linearly: about USD 1.20 for 0.10 lot and about USD 0.12 for 0.01 lot.

Does the SNB still defend a floor on EUR/CHF?

No. The SNB abandoned the 1.20 floor on 15 January 2015, and no floor is announced. The SNB has, however, repeatedly said it is willing to be active in the foreign exchange market as necessary.

How much margin does EUR/CHF need on Vanto?

One lot of EUR/CHF needs about USD 224 of margin at the 1:500 forex cap in the Vanto snapshot of 10 October 2026, calculated as 100,000 euros at the EUR/USD price of 1.12014 divided by 500. Margin is a deposit and not a loss limit, and the loss on a position is calculated on the full notional value.

Do I pay swap to hold EUR/CHF overnight?

In the Vanto feed a long EUR/CHF position has a positive swap sign and a short position a negative one, so a short position pays financing. The signs depend on the rate gap and can change, and the triple-swap charge falls on Wednesday.

Calculate the Numbers Before You Trade

The Vanto trading calculator shows the pip value and margin for EUR/CHF at any lot size, and with the stop-out formula above it turns a stop distance into an amount at risk. Run the figures for a gap as well as for a normal day, because the second tells you the size of the position and the first does not.

Risk warning. Trading securities, futures, options, and contracts for differences are complex financial instruments that require knowledge and understanding. Prices can fluctuate significantly and securities may become valueless. Investors may incur losses exceeding the potential for profits. Trading on margin can result in losses greater than the amount initially deposited. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance. The information in this article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument. Consider whether CFD trading is appropriate for your circumstances and seek independent advice if necessary.