SNB & CHF

Gold Does Not Fear Interest Rate Hikes – Gold no longer fears or pays attention to Fed announcements regarding interest rates – Renewed interest in gold due to inflation fears and concern Fed won’t do enough to control it – Higher interest rates on horizon will make debt levels unsustainable – New Fed Chair warns “the US is not on a sustainable fiscal path” and could lead to an “unsustainable” debt load – Higher...

London Property Sees Brave Bet By Norway As Foxtons Profits Plunge – Sales in London property market at ‘historic lows’ – 65% fall in pre-tax profits in 2017 to £6.5m reported by London estate agents Foxtons – Foxtons warns 2018 will ‘remain challenging’ for London property – Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is backing London’s property market – RICS: UK property stock hits record low as buyer demand falls – Own physical...

The percentage of household assets invested in stocks fell from almost 40% in 1969 to a mere 13% in 1982, after thirteen years of grinding losses. The conventional wisdom of financial advisors–to save money and invest it in stocks and bonds “for the long haul”–a “buy and hold” strategy that has functioned as the default setting of financial planning for the past 60 years–may well be disastrously wrong for the next...

Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Jeffrey Snider to MacroVoices. Erik and Jeffrey discuss gold swaps, how central banks engage in them and what has changed in gold swap markets today. They further investigate the gold bug’s conspiracy theory about “gold pukes” and what happened to gold in the 2008 crisis. They finally touch on how has the mood changed in gold starting 2017?

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) published its 2017 annual result today. The SNB confirmed a profit of CHF54.4bn in 2017. This was more than double the 2016 figure (CHF24.5bn) and its biggest profit ever. Earnings from the SNB’s foreign currency positions amounted to CHF49.7bn, its gold holdings increased in value by CHF3.1bn and its Swiss positions by CHF2bn (see Chart below). The CHF2bn profit the SNB made on its Swiss...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.1% to 1.1704 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Expectations that the European Central Bank would change its forward guidance in a substantive way had been one of the factors behind the euro’s appreciation. However, more recently, the anticipation has slackened. The last meeting took place around...

Vincenz built Raiffeisen up during his tenure as CEO (Keystone) - Click to enlarge Zurich prosecutors have opened criminal proceedings against the former chief executive of Swiss banking group Raiffeisen, Pierin Vincenz, looking into suspicions of misdealing. The bank has also joined the probe as a private complainant. “Raiffeisen is therefore making a maximum contribution to the complete clarification of...

Normally the action in the gold and silver futures markets tends to be pretty similar, since the same general forces affect both precious metals. When inflation or some other source of anxiety is ascendant, both metals rise, and vice versa. But lately – perhaps in a sign of how confused the world is becoming – gold and silver traders have diverged. Taking gold first, the speculators – who tend to be wrong at major...

For a very long time, they tried it “our” way. It isn’t working out so well for them any longer, so in one sense you can’t blame them for seeking answers elsewhere. It was a good run while it lasted. The big problem is that what “it” was wasn’t ever our way. Not really. The Chinese for decades followed not a free market paradigm but an orthodox Economics one. This is no trivial difference, as the latter is far more...

Unemployment Rate (not seasonally adjusted) Registered unemployment in February 2018 – According to SECO surveys, at the end of February 2018, 143,930 unemployed people were registered with the regional employment agencies (RAV), 5,231 fewer than in the previous month. The unemployment rate fell from 3.3% in January 2018 to 3.2% in the month under review. Compared with the same month of the previous year,...