SNB & CHF

After falling in July and August, the US dollar strengthened against most of the major currencies in September.  The dramatic pullback in equities seemed to have undergirded the yen’s resilience, which gained a net 0.25% against the dollar.  However, the dollar’s broadly firmer tone appears corrective and consolidative in nature and coincided with the downturn in equities, especially high flying US tech shares.  Risk assets, in general, succumbed to profit-taking...

The best-case scenario is those who love their “great city” will accept the daunting reality that even greatness can go bankrupt. Two recent essays pin each end of the “urban exodus” spectrum. James Altucher’s sensationalized NYC Is Dead Forever, Here’s Why focuses on the technological improvements in bandwidth that enable digital-economy types to work from anywhere, and the destabilizing threat of rising crime. In his telling, both will drive an accelerating urban...

During Tuesday’s presidential debate, former vice president Biden attempted to paint Donald Trump as the bad-on-crime candidate when he claimed that crime had gone down during the Obama administration but increased during Trump’s term. Whether or not this is a plausible claim depends on how one looks at the data. And given that law enforcement and criminal prosecutions for street crime are generally a state and local matter, it’s unclear why any president ought to be...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.03% to 1.0784 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 2(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Before a US election, there is often speculation of a last-minute game-changing development. News earlier today that the US President and his wife have tested positive for the Covid virus has injected a new unknown into not only the US election but the markets as well. Many centers in...

01.10.2020 – The consumer price index (CPI) remained stable in September 2020 compared with the previous month, reaching 101.2 points (December 2015 = 100). Inflation was –0.8% compared with the same month of the previous year. These are the results of the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The stability of the index compared with the previous month is the result of opposing trends that counterbalanced each other overall. Prices for international package holidays...

01.10.2020 – Turnover adjusted for sales days and holidays rose in the retail sector by 1.6% in nominal terms in August 2020 compared with the previous year. Seasonally adjusted, nominal turnover fell by 2.1% compared with the previous month. These are provisional findings from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). Real turnover adjusted for sales days and holidays rose in the retail sector by 2.5% in August 2020 compared with the previous year. Real growth takes...

The data comes just days after Swiss National Bank President Thomas Jordan signalled that even larger interventions may be on the cards in the future. Keystone / Anthony Anex The Swiss National Bank (SNB) spent CHF90 billion ($97.8 billion) in the first half of the year, more than it has spent in the past three years combined, to hold down artificially the value of the wealthy alpine state’s currency. In official data released for the first time on Wednesday, the...

Greenland’s glaciers are melting at an alarming rate and the Alpine Initiative says Manor’s “Berg” water contributes to global warming. Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. A mineral water from Greenland glaciers sold by Swiss retail chain Manor has been dubbed worst climate offender in this year’s “Devil’s Stone” award by the Swiss Alpine Initiative. Every year the Alpine Initiative asks people to vote on three candidates for the most absurd...

It’s always something. There’s forever some mystery factor standing in the way. On the topic of inflation, for years it was one “transitory” issue after another. The media, on behalf of the central bankers it holds up as a technocratic ideal, would report these at face value. The more obvious explanation, the argument with all the evidence, just couldn’t be true otherwise it’d collapse the technocracy right down to the ground. And so it was also in the bond market....

Anyone claiming they can project the trajectory of the U.S. and global economy is deluding themselves. Normalcy depends entirely on everyday life being predictable. To be predictable, life must be stable, which means that there is a high level of certainty in every aspect of life. The world has entered an era of profound uncertainty, an uncertainty that will only increase as self-reinforcing feedbacks strengthen disrupting dynamics and perverse incentives drive...