Market conditions that changed the rules: what changed
Last updated: July 1, 2026
This section is deliberately short, and none of it is market commentary: a rate move or an index level appears here only when it changed the arithmetic a long-term plan is built on.
The interest-rate cycle accounts for most of it. The ECB exited negative interest rates in July 2022 and the SNB followed in September of the same year, ending almost eight years in which holding cash in Switzerland cost money. By June 2025 the SNB had cut back to zero. For a saver this bracketed a brief window in which cash yielded something, and it is also what reactivated Germany's Vorabpauschale, which had been dormant at zero base rate since 2018.
Inflation is the second strand. The OeNB documented a record real wealth loss for Austrian savers over the 2022–2023 squeeze — the clearest available illustration of what a nominal deposit rate below inflation does to purchasing power over just two years.
The third strand is market structure. Zero-commission trading became the US industry standard in October 2019, Canada moved to T+1 settlement in May 2024, and Germany's ETF savings plan volumes hit records in the same year. None of these is news in the daily sense; all of them changed what a regular monthly contribution actually costs to execute.
Changes in this section
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14 entries
- SNB cuts policy rate back to 0%Switzerland
- Savings and Investments Union strategy launchedEuropean Union
- MiFIR review in force: EU payment-for-order-flow banEuropean Union
Rules change; the arithmetic does not. Put your own contributions, rate and horizon into the calculator and see what a change is worth over twenty years.
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The 27.5% KESt, crypto pulled inside the ordinary tax net, MiFID II — and a holding-period exemption promised by two governments and enacted by neither.
The FHSA, rising TFSA room and Home Buyers' Plan limits, the CPP enhancement, the DSC ban — and a capital gains hike announced, then cancelled.
MiFID II and PRIIPs, the payment-for-order-flow ban, ELTIF 2.0 and PEPP, and the Savings and Investments Union now being built on top of them.
The 2018 fund tax reform and the Vorabpauschale, a doubled saver's allowance, the ETF savings-plan boom, and two retirement reforms arriving in 2027.
PIR accounts and BTP Valore, a crypto tax regime rewritten twice in three years, and the auto-enrolment that now moves severance pay into pension funds.
Retroactive pillar 3a buy-ins, AHV 21, the end of negative interest rates, the abolished imputed rental value, and the reforms voters turned down.
The SECURE Acts, commissions falling to zero, spot Bitcoin ETFs, the TCJA and its 2025 sequel, and the fiduciary rules that courts struck down twice.
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How investment income is taxed keeps moving: allowances and rates, the Vorabpauschale, new crypto regimes, and Canada's cancelled capital gains hike.
The vehicles people actually retire on: SECURE 2.0, pillar 3a buy-ins, the CPP enhancement, TFR auto-enrolment and Germany's new retirement depots.
MiFID II, PRIIPs, FIDLEG, the payment-for-order-flow ban and the fiduciary rules that failed in court — how the selling of products was rewritten.
ETF savings plans, spot Bitcoin ETFs, PIR and FHSA accounts, BTP Valore and ELTIF 2.0: what savers can buy, and at what cost, keeps widening.
Where standard advice was revised: trading costs at zero, banned sales charges, standardised fund disclosure, and what negative real rates did to cash.
Limit changes large enough to alter a savings plan: Germany's doubled saver's allowance, retroactive pillar 3a buy-ins, TFSA, FHSA and catch-up rules.