Avertissement : les CFD sont des instruments complexes et comportent un risque élevé de perte rapide d'argent en raison de l'effet de levier.
Vous devez vous demander si vous comprenez le fonctionnement des CFD et si vous pouvez vous permettre de prendre le risque élevé de perdre votre argent.
Trader Web MT5
B
Bank of England
The UK’s central bank, founded in 1694. That makes it one of the oldest still-operating central banks anywhere, beaten only by Sweden’s Riksbank. Nicknamed “the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street” after its London address.
Three big jobs. First, the Monetary Policy Committee sets Bank Rate eight times a year, with a 2% inflation target and a remit issued by the Chancellor. Second, the Prudential Regulation Authority; housed inside the Bank; regulates banks, building societies, and insurers. Third, the Financial Policy Committee monitors systemic risk and can deploy macroprudential tools like countercyclical capital buffers.
The Bank also issues banknotes (in England and Wales; Scottish and Northern Irish banknotes are issued separately) and operates the UK’s wholesale payment system.
Example: In late September 2022, after the Truss government’s mini-budget triggered a violent sell-off in long-dated gilts, the Bank stepped in with emergency gilt purchases to stabilise the market. Pension funds running liability-driven investment strategies were facing forced sales that could have collapsed the long end. The Bank’s intervention was small in size, decisive in effect, and over within two weeks.
Bank of Japan
Japan’s central bank, established in 1882. The BoJ has spent the last three decades being the world’s monetary-policy laboratory, mostly because it had to. After the asset bubble collapsed in 1990, conventional easing didn’t work, and the BoJ has been improvising ever since.
The list of firsts is long. First major central bank to hit zero rates. First to do quantitative easing (2001). First to buy ETFs and REITs as part of monetary policy. First to cap bond yields directly through yield-curve control (2016). First in the modern era to push policy rates negative.
In 2024, after years of inflation finally returning to Japan, the BoJ ended negative rates, abandoned yield-curve control, and started normalising. The yen, which had been trading at 38-year lows against the dollar, became the centre of one of the year’s biggest macro stories; a sharp rally followed by a global carry-trade unwind in early August.
Example: When the BoJ raised rates from -0.1% to a range of 0% to 0.1% in March 2024, it ended a stretch of negative rates that had run for eight years. The yen still didn’t strengthen meaningfully until later that year, when actual policy divergence with the Fed began to narrow.
Bank rate
The interest rate at which central banks lend money to commercial banks.
Bank reserve
Funds held by banks to ensure they have enough liquidity to meet customer needs and for emergencies.
Bank Run
A bank run is what happens when too many depositors lose faith at the same time and rush to withdraw their money. The mechanics are brutal in their simplicity. Banks don’t keep most of your deposits in a vault; they lend them out. So when withdrawal requests spike past a certain point, the bank can’t meet them, not because it’s insolvent, necessarily, but because its assets are illiquid. Loans don’t unwind on demand.
The terrifying thing about runs is that they’re rational at the individual level and catastrophic in aggregate. If you think the bank might fail, getting your money out before everyone else is the smart move. Once enough people think that way, the prophecy fulfils itself.
Modern bank runs don’t look like the queues outside Northern Rock in 2007 anymore. They happen on apps, in minutes, with billions of dollars moving before anyone shows up at a branch.
Example: Silicon Valley Bank, March 2023. Depositors pulled $42 billion in a single day after concerns about the bank’s bond portfolio went viral on Twitter and in startup founder WhatsApp groups. The bank was shut down by regulators the next morning. The whole thing took about 36 hours from the first whisper to the FDIC takeover.
Banking Institutions
The umbrella term for entities that take deposits, make loans, or provide payments services. The category is broader than most people realise, and it matters because different types of banks face different rules, risks, and regulators.
The main flavours: commercial banks (the ones with branches and your debit card), investment banks (capital raising, M&A, trading), universal banks (both, under one roof, JPMorgan, HSBC, BNP Paribas), savings banks and credit unions (mutual or cooperative ownership, retail focus), central banks (in a category of their own), development banks (World Bank, ADB, EIB, public mandate, long-tenor lending), and shadow banks (entities that do bank-like things without being banks, which is exactly the regulatory headache it sounds like).
Why the taxonomy matters: deposit insurance, capital rules, liquidity requirements, and crisis support all depend on what bucket an institution sits in. The 2008 crisis was largely a story of risk migrating from regulated commercial banks into the shadow-banking system, where the rules didn’t reach.
Example: When Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, it wasn’t a deposit-taking commercial bank. It was an investment bank that had funded itself heavily through repo markets, a form of shadow banking. That distinction is partly why it failed: it had no deposits, no FDIC backstop, and no Fed discount window access.
Commencez à trader avec un courtier leader mondial
Vous voulez commencer à trader ?
Nous utilisons des cookies pour comprendre comment vous utilisez notre site Web et pour vous offrir la meilleure expérience possible. Vous pouvez en savoir plus en consultant notre politique en matière de cookies.
