SNB & CHF

Tickets cannot be bought on public transport in Switzerland. Passengers are required to have a ticket before boarding. Those caught on public transport without one will soon have their names put into a national register. This will ensure progressively higher fines are issued to repeat offenders. ©_SBB_CFF_FFS - Click to enlarge The new database will be rolled out from April 2019, reported RTS. By the end of 2019, the...

The bright yellow buses carry passengers throughout the Alps The Federal Office of Transport has filed a legal complaint to the Attorney General’s office and judicial authorities of Bern canton in connection with the scandal hitting the Swiss PostBus company. The complaint for possible breaches of administrative law, fraud and mismanagement is filed against unnamed persons. It is also directed against any parts of the...

Global Debt Crisis II Cometh – Global debt ‘area of weakness’ and could ‘induce financial panic’ – King warns– Global debt to GDP now 40 per cent higher than it was a decade ago – BIS warn – Global non-financial corporate debt grew by 15% to 96% of GDP in the past six years – US mortgage rates hit highest level since May 2014– US student loans near $1.4 trillion, 40% expected to default in next 5 years– UK consumer debt...

Copper vs. Oil The Q1 2018 meeting of the Incrementum Fund’s Advisory Board took place on January 24, about one week before the recent market turmoil began. In a way it is funny that this group of contrarians who are well known for their skeptical stance on the risk asset bubble, didn’t really discuss the stock market much on this occasion. Of course there was little to add to what was already talked about extensively...

The scope of this note is to present a score card for Emerging Market (EM)currencies, designed to assess the attractiveness of a given currency over the coming 12 months. The scorecard (see chart), constructed using a rules – based methodology, suggests that the Russian rubble and the Brazilian real are currently among the most attractive EM currencies. EM FX scorecard - Click to enlarge Construction of the EM FX...

Financial writer Charles Hugh Smith sees one very big problem coming at us, and that is a dramatic loss in buying power of the U.S. dollar, but it’s not just the dollar. According to Smith, “All these currencies, there is nothing backing the currencies except the government’s force. That’s the yen, the euro, the dollar and the Chinese yuan. They are all going to have a catastrophic drop against real assets because they are all based on too much leverage, too much debt, too much money...

French unemployment fell surprisingly fast in Q4 2017, to a new cyclical low. France registered the largest drop in unemployment in about ten years in Q4 2017. In metropolitan France, the number of unemployed fell by 205,000 to 2.5 million people, pushing the ILO unemployment rate down to 8.6% of the labour force (-0.7pp), its lowest level since Q1 2009. The improvement was broad based across age groups and worker...

Swiss government accounts closed with a surplus of CHF2.8 billion ($3 billion) for 2017, compared with a forecast deficit of CHF250 million, Finance Minister Ueli Maurer said at a press conference in Bern on Wednesday. This was due mainly to higher-than-estimated tax revenues. The surplus would have been even higher, at CHF4.8 billion, had it not been for an accounting provision of CHF2 billion. The real surplus of...

– Sovereign wealth funds investing in gold for long term returns – PwC – Gold has outperformed equities and bonds over the long term – PwC Research – Gold is up 6.7% and 6.8% per annum over 10 and 20 year periods; Stocks and bonds returned less than 5.2% respectively over same period (see PwC table) – From 1971 to 2016 (45 years), “gold real returns were approximately 10% while inflation increased 4%” – Gold also...

Summary The National Stock Exchange of India will end all licensing agreements and stop offering live prices overseas. Philippine central bank cut reserve requirements for commercial banks. Egypt cut rates for the first time since 2015. Israeli police recommended that Prime Minister Netanyahu be charged. South Africa President Zuma resigned before a no confidence vote was held. Brazil President Temer will issue a...