SNB & CHF

The former site of the Dubendorf airfield near Zurich is being transformed into an innovation park that will stretch over 38 hectares (Zurich Innovation Park) - Click to enlarge Switzerland is the leading nation for innovation for the seventh year in a row, according to the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The other countries in the top five for 2017 were Sweden, the Netherlands, the...

A real estate report by the bank UBS, which looks at 25 top resorts in Switzerland, Austria, France and Italy, shows vacation home price drops across Switzerland. These price falls contrast with price rises in resorts in Austria, France and Italy. With more than 10,000 second homes, Crans-Montana is Switzerland’s biggest market in the Alpine region. Next is Davos/Klosters with just under 10,000 apartments. Third is...

This Great Graphic, created on Bloomberg show the performance of growth and value stocks since the start of December 2016.  The yellow line is the Russell 1000 Growth Index.  The white line is the Russell 1000 Value Index.  The outperformance of the former is clear. The Value Index tracks the performance of Russell 1000 companies with lower price-to-book ratios and lower projected growth values.   The Growth Index...

Maurice Jackson Interviews Jayant Bhandari We are happy to present another interview conducted by Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable with our friend and frequent contributor Jayant Bhandari, a specialist on gold mining investment, the world’s most outspoken emerging market contrarian, host of the highly regarded annual Capitalism and Morality conference in London and consultant to institutional investors. As soon...

Chinese trade statistics were for May 2017 better than expected by economists, but on the export side questions remain as to their accuracy. Earlier this year discrepancies between estimates first published by the General Administration of Customs (GAC), those you find reported in the media, and what is captured by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), backed up by data from the Ministry of Commerce, became...

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog, After many months of fighting all the naysayers predicting the next big stock market crash, I am finally succumbing to the seductive story of the dark side, and getting negative on equities. I am often early, so maybe this means the rally is about to accelerate to the upside. I am willing to take that chance. It would be just like me to pound the table on the long side,...

Swiss Franc The euro has appreciated by 0.23% to 1.0896 CHF. EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ) - Click to enlarge FX Rates As the market heads into the weekend, the US dollar is trading softer as it consolidates. It is within yesterday’s ranges against the major currencies but the Japanese yen. The dollar has made a dramatic recovery against the yen. It traded near JPY108.80 in the middle of...

Cluster bombs are reviled for their indiscriminate effect and potential to kill and maim people if unexploded - Click to enlarge The leading Swiss state pension fund, Publica, has announced that it plans to disinvest from five weapons companies. This follows a national campaign by a responsible investment pension group to blacklist 15 international arms firms. According to a report by Swiss public radio, SRF, Publica,...

This Great Graphic was posted by Steve Goldstein at MarketWatch. The blue line shows the effective Fed funds rate. The orange line depicts the average interest rate on a $10,000 one-year CD. The Fed funds target rate has risen, but the rate of the average yield of the certificate of deposit has not risen.  It is at 25 bp, an increase of five basis points over the past four years.  Goldstein documents other evidence that...