SNB & CHF

 © Miriam Doerr | Dreamstime.com As Switzerland moves towards easing Covid-19 social restrictions, some fear the virus will get away again. A key part of containing the spread is testing. One way to evaluate how comprehensive testing is is to look at positivity, the percentage of tests that are positive. Imagine the population were a jar of jelly beans, the testing a scoop, and the red jelly beans in the scoop positives. Positivity would be the percentage of red...

Many people in Switzerland will be counting their change more carefully. (© Keystone / Christian Beutler) In a revised forecast in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, federal authorities predict GDP will contract by 6.7% in 2020 and recover slowly in 2021. On Thursday, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) announced that it had adjusted 2020 economic forecasts to take into account sporting events affected by the pandemic. The original revised forecast...

There is no schadenfreude at times like these, no time to dance on anyone’s grave. Victory laps are a luxury that only central bankers take – always prematurely. The world already coming apart because of GFC1, what comes next with GFC2 and then whatever follows it? Another “bond king” has thrown in the towel. Franklin Templeton’s candidate for the title has been Michael Hasenstab, and like all the other Kings he’d been betting that interest rates would have...

The major ratings agencies are punishing Emerging Markets (EM) credits much more than their DM counterparts.  Our own sovereign ratings model suggests that there is still more pain to come. We have produced this interim ratings model to assist investors in assessing relative sovereign risk across the major EMs.  While the situation is still fluid with regards to the ultimate coronavirus impact on the global economy as well as the policy responses, we thought it...

On Wednesday, April 1, the acting prime minister of Barbados, Hon. Santia Bradshaw, came on the local news station to announce a mandatory partial shutdown to combat COVID-19. She announced that starting April 3, all “nonessential” businesses would remain closed until midnight April 14. I watched this address with my girlfriend, and we both were scared. Not so much for the coronavirus, though it is a great concern to us. We had recently begun disinfecting all of our...

Am Aktienmarkt ist Erholung zu erkennen, aber ist diese von Dauer? Ich kaufe trotzdem regelmässig nach, komme was wolle. Ich nutze die Gelegenheit, um Main Street Capital mit starkem Abschlag aufzustocken und habe mir 50 Aktien gekauft. Jetzt besitze ich insgesamt 200 Stück. Hier geht’s übrigens zum letzten Aktien Kauf ABB Ltd. Kauf von Main Street Capital Main Street Capital ist eine Business Development Company kurz BDC. Diese haben besonders stark eingesteckt,...

Shadow Banking. Go look up Jeff Snider. This is not an advertisement. He's just the best resource for learning about the world banking system, called the EuroDollar system. He has Twitter, and EuroDollar University videos on YouTube.

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.06% to 1.0517 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, April 23(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Investors have remained fairly calm in the face of flash April PMI crashes and an increase of virus cases in several European countries. Most equity markets in the Asia Pacific region rose, with the notable exceptions of China and Australia.  The Nikkei rose for the first time this...

A drone is used to determine the quality of the grass, pictured at the Swiss Future Farm, a demonstration farm for smart-farming technologies. (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) Remote sensing, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics are being integrated into everyday farm management. Based on information relayed by a Swiss start-up, the owner of a sugar mill in India tells local cane farmers it’s almost time to harvest their crop. The information provided to the...

Gold prices are 0.7% higher today after falling just 0.3% yesterday as traders sought refuge in safe haven gold as oil prices collapsed lower again. Oil slumped to nearly $15 a barrel, its lowest since 1999 as the economic fallout from government lockdowns and the shutting down of entire economies impacts risk assets and commodities dependent on economic growth. WTI crude is now down 81% and Brent crude down 71% so far in 2020. Gold price forecasts are being...