Since the summer of 2007, the total value of our £ notes in circulation has risen from £ to £ Again, I believe this is a pattern seen in the high denomination notes of other currencies. Chart 5 shows the same story, but this time expressing it in terms of the contribution of each denomination to overall growth. The yellow contribution shows the role of the £ This strikes me as pretty good prima facie evidence that there has been an increase in demand for banknotes as a store of value. BIS Review 162/2009  3  So far, I have told the story of trends in demand for banknotes over the last forty years in terms more of the macroeconomics of demand for notes as central bank money. Now I want to turn to the more micro elements of banknote use. The first thing to say here, as Chart 6 illustrates, is that over the last twenty years there has been a major change in the method of distributing banknotes to the public. At the start of the 1990s there were under 20,000 ATMs in the UK, whereas now the number is over 60,000. Since the beginning of the current decade, the major growth has been among the independent ATM deployers, as opposed to financial institution operated machines. 4  BIS Review 162/2009  And as Chart 7 shows, ATM withdrawals now account for around 70% of all cash acquisitions by individuals in the UK, compared with 25% in the early 1990s.
In Japan, monetary policy announcements resulted in significantly improved investor sentiment, with the Nikkei stock index climbing by 80% between November 2012 and May 2013 on the back of a strongly depreciated yen and the ensuing higher profit expectations of Japanese companies. In the positive risk climate, investments perceived as secure have lost value. A prominent example is gold: The dollar price per fine ounce of gold had risen in 2011 to a high of USD 1,900. Currently, it is approximately a quarter lower. Government bonds perceived as secure have also fallen in value, even though their yields are still very low. This also applies to Confederation bonds. While the yield on ten-year Confederation bonds, for example, has significantly increased since the low point of last December, at around 0.8% it is still extremely low. Movements in the Swiss franc exchange rate matched this risk-friendly market environment. Since January, the euro/Swiss franc exchange rate has moved further away from the minimum rate of CHF 1.20, and at times, values were recorded which were last seen in Spring 2011, in other words, before the introduction of the minimum exchange rate. On a trade-weighted basis, however, the Swiss franc has remained largely unchanged since the beginning of the year. The favourable developments on the financial markets, which have persisted over a lengthy period, were the result of a reduction in extreme risks.