SNB & CHF

The Swiss National Bank has revised down its medium-term forecast for consumer inflation. We still expect a first SNB rate hike in September 2019. At the end of its quarterly monetary assessment meeting, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) left its main policy rates unchanged. Also unchanged from the last quarterly meeting in June was the central bank’s assessment of the Swiss franc as “high valued” and its characterisation...

Swiss boardrooms: more than just a nice view. (© KEYSTONE / CHRISTIAN BEUTLER) A report on the salaries of CEOs across Europe has found that Switzerland once again tops the table, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. The report also discovers that salaries have risen over the past year. CHF8.7 million ($9.05 million): this was the median compensation of bosses of top companies in Switzerland in 2017, according to this...

Credit bubbles are not engines of sustainable employment, they are only engines of malinvestment and wealth destruction on a grand scale. We all know the Status Quo’s response to the global financial meltdown of 2008 has been a travesty of a mockery of a sham–smoke and mirrors, flimsy facades of “recovery,” simulacrum “reforms,” serial bubble-blowing and politically expedient can-kicking, all based on borrowing and...

Mathias Ruch (foreground) explains his vision as co-founder and CEO of CVVC. A consortium of Swiss investors has launched a private equity vehicle that aims to collect up to $100 million with the long-term goal of getting 1,000 blockchain companies off the ground internationally every year. The Swiss company Crypto Valley Venture Capitalexternal link (CV VC) launched its initial “Genesis Hub” incubator in Zug, home to...

Boosted by tax reform, deregulation, and strong earnings growth, US equities have motored ahead, leaving other benchmarks far behind. As the Great Graphic here shows, most of the other benchmarks are lower on the year. The S&P 500 (yellow line) is up 8.8% for the year before the new record highs seeing seen now, while the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 from Europe (purple line) is still off 1.7%. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index...

Latest poverty figures provide government with an argument for fiscal stumulus. Severe material deprivation rates gauge the proportion of people whose living conditions are severely affected by a lack of resources. According to Eurostat, “it represents the proportion of people living in households that cannot afford at least four of the following nine items: mortgage or rent payments, utility bills, hire purchase...

Le Conseil fédéral se distingue par 2 points tout compte fait complémentaires. Le premier est son soutien indéfectible à la politique expansionniste et ruineuse de la BNS, dont il a la responsabilité au plan constitutionnel. Celle-ci mobilise les richesses du pays, puis les convertit en monnaies étrangères, pour enfin  les investir dans des actifs plus ou moins pourris, plus ou moins risqués, voire plus ou moins...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.40% at 1.1244 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, September 20(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates The euro poked through $1.18 for the first time since the June ECB meeting. There is an option for about 740 mln euros that expires there today and another at $1.1775 for 890 mln euros. That June high was near $1.1850, which was a five-high. If...

“Just run the presses – print money.” That’s what President Donald Trump supposedly instructed his former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn to do in response to the budget deficit. The quote appears in Bob Woodward’s controversial book Fear: Trump in the White House. Trump disputes many of the anecdotes Woodward assembled. But regardless of whether the President used those exact words, they do reflect an “easy money”...

While the recent economic ‘soft patch’ has hurt all the main euro area economies, some have been more affected more than others. A divergence in fortunes can be seen across asset classes. The four biggest euro area economies slowed in H1 2018 due to a number of factors, including weak exports. We expect a rebound in H2—except in Italy, where political uncertainty has been denting business confidence. Forward indicators...