With the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates, and President Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank seemingly unable to escape his addiction to quantitative easing policy, many investors are questioning who wants to buy the euro. The answer is simple. The whole world is eager to buy the euro. The problem in 2017 is more likely to be finding anyone who wants to buy the US dollar.
The Middle East is a good example of a region of avid euro buyers. Even with the recent rally in the oil price, most Middle Eastern countries are expected to run sizeable fiscal deficits. The IMF expects Saudi Arabia to run a fiscal deficit of almost 10 per cent of GDP next year. To fund their budget deficits, the Gulf countries are selling central bank reserves and pools of assets held by their sovereign wealth funds.
Imagine Saudi Arabia sells US Treasuries, and uses the dollars it receives to pay its civil servants. Then imagine that a Saudi Arabian civil servant takes their pay and uses the money to buy a BMW car in euros. What is happening? Saudi Arabia is selling dollars and buying euros. It does not matter that there is an asset on one side of the transaction and a BMW on the other side of the transaction — the foreign exchange market implication is the same whether it is Bunds or BMWs that are bought.