SNB & CHF

Mechanical industries like precision toolmaking are doing well lately. Photo taken at Feintool near Bern (© KEYSTONE / GAETAN BALLY) - Click to enlarge The Swiss mechanical, electrical and metal industries are recovering, as indicated by increases in turnover and employment. The industry lobby group Swissmemexternal link reported on Thursday that 4,500 additional jobs were generated in 2017 compared to the...

So who’s holding the hot potato of systemic risk now? Everyone. One of the greatest con jobs of the past 9 years is the status quo’s equivalence of risk and volatility: risk = volatility: so if volatility is low, then risk is low. Wrong: volatility once reflected specific short-term aspects of risk, but measures of volatility such as the VIX have been hijacked to generate the illusion that risk is low. But even an...

Stretched to the Limit There are good reasons to suspect that the bull market in US equities has been stretched to the limit. These include inter alia: high fundamental valuation levels, as e.g. illustrated by the Shiller P/E ratio (a.k.a. “CAPE”/ cyclically adjusted P/E); rising interest rates; and the maturity of the advance. Near the end of a bull market cycle there is always the question of when a decline will...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.36% to 1.1634 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, March 06(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates The resiliency of the status quo is again on display. After much chin wagging and finger pointing after the Italian elections and the modest decline in Italian assets, they have bounced back today. Italian bonds and stocks are participating...

USD/CHF The USDCHF pair shows sideways trading around the EMA50, noticing that the EMA50 shows clear negative signals on the four hours’ time frame, while the price settles below the intraday bullish channel’s support line that appears on the chart. Therefore, we will continue to suggest the bearish trend in the upcoming period conditioned by the price stability below 0.9440 level, noting that breaking 0.9373 is...

Summary: The Canadian dollar has fallen ~7.5% against the Mexican peso this year. Mexico has much greater political risk than Canada. Be patient. Look for a reversal pattern nearer key support. This Great Graphic composed on Bloomberg shows the Canadian dollar against the Mexican peso since the start of last year. There have been three big moves. The Canadian dollar trended lower against the peso as it corrected from...

Companies in French-speaking Switzerland featured high up in the ranking. (Keystone) - Click to enlarge 23.3% of businesses in Switzerland did not pay their bills on time in 2017, found the business information service Bisnode D&Bexternal link in a survey published on Wednesday. That’s 0.3% less late-payers compared to 2016. The average delay of payments was also shorter in 2017, averaging 14.4 days,...

(Several calculation mistake were corrected) The increasing volatility of SNB Earnings Annual results are not really definite. Given that the SNB accumulates foreign currencies with interventions, they have huge swings. But the SNB may lose 50 billion in one year and win 60 billion in the next year or vice verse SNB Results Longterm 2017 - Click to enlarge Annual result of the Swiss National Bank for 2017...

The consumer price index (CPI) increased by 0.4% in February 2018 compared with the previous month, reaching 101.1 points (December 2015=100). Inflation was 0.6% compared with the same month of the previous year. These are the results of the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). Switzerland Consumer Price Index (CPI) YoY, Apr 2013 - Mar 2018(see more posts on Switzerland Consumer Price Index, ) Source: Investing.com -...

Erik Townsend welcomes Jeffrey Snider to MacroVoices. Erik and Jeffrey discuss: -- Gold swaps and how do central banks engage in them -- What has changed in gold swaps, how are they done.