SNB & CHF

Gold prices continued to shine this week reaching $1,244.70 per ounce and and has posted gains in five of the last six weeks. This week it reached a new three-month high – it’s highest since the Trump win and has climbed over 6% this year, beating the gains made in the same period in 2016. The yellow metal has climbed 4.30% in the US dollar, 3.38% in the Euro and 1.35% in the sterling, in the last 30 days. This week...

Initial jobless claims fell to just 234k for the week of February 4, nearly matching the 233k multi-decade low in mid-November. That brought the 4-week moving average down to just 244k, which was a new low going all the way back to the early 1970’s. Jobless claims seemingly stand in sharp contrast to other labor market figures which have been suggesting an economic slowdown for nearly two years. Unemployment insurance...

  Unemployment Rate (not seasonally adjusted) According to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) surveys, 164,466 unemployed were registered at the Regional Employment Centers (RAV) at the end of January 2017, 5,094 more than in the previous month. The unemployment rate thus rose from 3.5% in December 2016 to 3.7% in the reporting month. Switzerland Unemployment Rate Not Seasonally Adjusted January...

Swiss Franc EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc, February 09(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ) - Click to enlarge Currency manipulation is becoming a hot topic now that Donald Trump has been inaugurated as the US President. Followers of his social media accounts will be aware of his criticism’s of a number of countries for artificially weakening their currency’s in order to remain competitive on a global scale, and recently...

Summary: Dollar movement helps some economic interest and hurts others. From a strategic point of view, the best thing for the US is the market-generated rate. It was an important achievement that the forex market was de-weaponized. Many observers have been crying wolf about a currency war for many years, which may have de-sensitized investors to the threat of a real one. Reports suggest that recently President...

Looming Currency and Liquidity Problems The quarterly meeting of the Incrementum Advisory Board was held on January 11, approximately one month ago. A download link to a PDF document containing the full transcript including charts an be found at the end of this post. As always, a broad range of topics was discussed; although some time has passed since the meeting, all these issues remain relevant. Our comments below...

Katie Martin and Marc Chandler I am in London as part of a larger business trip. I had the chance today to talk to Katie Martin, who runs Fast FT and is often writing about foreign exchange. They show was live on Facebook. It is about a 22 minute interview and although foreign exchange is the key issue, to get to it we end up talking about many things, including US interest rates, Trump, and even cooking frogs. Often I...

This is what our mode of production optimizes: ugliness, debt-serfdom, and servitude to politically dominant corporations. An insightful correspondent recently remarked on the striking transition of American neighborhoods from commercial districts dominated by locally owned businesses to streets lined with look-alike outlets of Corporate America. This transition is so obvious that few even comment on it, much less ask...

Another problem is the rise of social discord, for reasons that extend beyond the reach of tax reductions and increased infrastructure spending. Have you noticed that the breathless anticipation of the next central bank “save” has diminished? Remember when the financial media was in a tizzy of excitement, speculating on what new central bank expansion would send the global markets higher in paroxysms of risk-on joy?...

Will EUR/CHF fall to 1.00 The reader might have seen the latest Swiss Consumer Sentiment and the UBS consumption indicator. They suggest that the Swiss boom phase should finally come. I anticipated the boom already in my slides for the CFA Society. The Swiss boom was postponed when the SNB decided to remove the euro peg in early 2015. What is the definition of a “boom”? It is economic activity mostly driven by...