SNB & CHF

We’re all against “fake news,” right? Until your content is deemed “fake news” in a “fake news” indictment without any evidence, trial or recourse. When propaganda is cleverly engineered, people don’t even recognize it as propaganda: welcome to the USSR, the United States of Suppression and Repression. The propaganda in the U.S. has reached such a high state that the majority of people accept it as “pravda” (truth), even as their limbic system’s BS detector is...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.15% to 1.0999 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 18(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The global capital markets are ending the week on a subdued note as the UK Parliament decision on Saturday is awaited. The weaker Chinese Q3 GDP had little impact outside of China, where stocks fell over 1%. A brief suspension of hostilities by Turkey was sufficient for the US to lift...

USD/CHF struggles around 38.2% Fibonacci retracement after declining to a three-week low. Bearish MACD favors further downpour to 0.9800/9795 support-zone. With its sustained trading below 50-day SMA, coupled with the bearish MACD, USD/CHF stays on the sellers’ radar even if it clings to 0.9880 during early Friday. The September 24 low nearing 0.9840 acts as immediate support for the pair while the previous month low and 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of April-August...

An initiative demanding a ban on tobacco advertising has collected 109,969 valid signatures, more than the 100,000 minimum required to launch a popular vote, according to RTS. The planned vote entitled: “Yes to the protection of children and young people against tobacco advertising” demands the federal government ban all forms of tobacco advertising towards children and young people. In practice such a ban would include banning all tobacco advertising in public...

I was invited to Rick Santelli’s Exchange on CNBC earlier today.  There is a 3.5-minute clip of the interview that can be found here. Despite being a dollar bull for nearly a decade (since around the time of my first book–Making Sense of the Dollar–), I do not think a strong or weak dollar is desirable.  It is about the level that is appropriate depending on business conditions and the economic cycle.  If the Fed is easing policy, as it is now, and the dollar...

If we want to make real progress, we have to properly diagnose the structural sources of the rot that is spreading quickly into every nook and cranny of the society and culture. It seems my rant yesterday (Let Me Know When It’s Over) upset a lot of people, many of whom felt I trivialized the differences between the parties and all the reforms that people believe will right wrongs and reduce suffering. OK, I get it, there are differences, but if the “reform” doesn’t...

Because the prevailing theory behind the global slowdown is “trade wars”, most if not all attention is focused on China. While the correct target, everyone is coming it at from the wrong direction. The world awaits a crash in Chinese exports engineered by US tariffs. It’s not happening, at least according to China’s official statistics. The reported numbers aren’t good by any stretch, but they aren’t perhaps as bad as imagined by the constant references to what we...

Despite the name, the Fed doesn’t actually intervene in the US$ repo market. I know they called them overnight repo operations, but that’s only because they mimic repo transactions not because the central bank is conducting them in that specific place. What really happened was FRBNY allotting bank reserves (in exchange for UST, MBS, and agency collateral) only to the 24 primary dealers. These were repos only between those entities and the Federal Reserve. It had...

The dollar remains under pressure due to weak US retail sales and rising optimism on Brexit and the trade war Brexit negotiations remain tense and we should expect a higher than usual noise-to-signal ratio at this stage China said its goal is to stop the trade war and remove all tariffs US has a full data schedule; we remain constructive on the US economic outlook UK reported September retail sales; Sweden’s unemployment rate hit a 4-year high of 7.4% Australia...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.26% to 1.0983 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 17(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: A Brexit deal between the UK and the EU has been struck. Whether it can win Parliament’s approval is a horse of a different color. Meanwhile, US-Chinese relations continue to sour. The capital markets are narrowly mixed as investors await further developments. The MSCI Asia Pacific...