SNB & CHF

A branch of Credit Suisse in Rapperswil, Switzerland (Keystone) - Click to enlarge Switzerland is the most secretive financial centre in the world, followed by the United States, according to the Tax Justice Network, a non-governmental organization that campaigns for greater transparency. The Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Germany, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates and Guernsey (in...

Unprecedented Extremes in Overbought Readings Readers may recall our recent articles on the blow-off move in the stock market, entitled Punch-Drunk Investors and Extinct Bears (see Part 1 & Part 2 for the details). Bears remained firmly extinct as of last week – in fact, some of the sentiment indicators we are keeping tabs on have become even more stretched, as incredible as that may sound. For instance, assets in...

Short and Long Term Forecasts Predicting the likely path of the prices of the metals in the near term is easy. Just look at the fundamentals. We have invested many man-years in developing the theory, model, and software to calculate it. Every week we publish charts and our calculated fundamental prices. However, predicting the outlook for a longer period of time is much harder. The fundamental shows the relative...

It’s interesting, to me anyway, that an image of the Roman goddess Juno remains to this day on the logo of the Bank of England. There are many stories about her role as it relates to money, but what cannot be denied is that the very word itself came to us from her temple. The Latin moneta was derived from the word monere, a verb meaning to warn. Moneta was Juno’s surname. One fable has it where the goddess’s sacred...

Momentum in the Japanese economy remains strong Japanese growth momentum is at its strongest in over a decade, with the quarterly Tankan survey of business conditions and sentiment strengthening to an 11 – year high in Q4 2017. The economy may have expanded by 1.8% in 2017, up from 0.9% in the previous year. In 2018, the growth rate may moderate slightly to 1.3%, but should remain well above Japan’s potential growth,...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.10% to 1.1578 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 01(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates The Yellen Fed ended on a high note. She took over the reins the of Federal Reserve an implemented a strategic normalization process monetary policy, and helped engineer not only the first post-crisis rate hikes but also the beginning of...

The Swiss People’s Party (UDC/SVP) in Geneva wants shopping hours in Geneva to be standardized and extended. © Tea | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge In general, French-speaking Switzerland has stricter laws on opening hours that the rest of Switzerland. For example a Migros store in Zurich is open until 9pm every night except Sunday. A similar store in Geneva is only open until 9pm one day a week. The rest of the...

Whilst sales of quartz watches declined last year, demand for more expensive mechanical timepieces grew significantly. (Keystone) - Click to enlarge After two years of decline, the Swiss watch industry grew by 2.7% in 2017, according to the figures released by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (FH) on Tuesday. Exports grew by 2.7 % to CHF19.9 billion ($21.3 billion) on 2016. “Growth returned sooner...

Something for Nothing The world is full of bad ideas.  Just look around.  One can hardly blink without a multitude of bad ideas coming into view.  What’s more, the worse an idea is, the more popular it becomes. Take Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor.  It’s nearly as destructive as prescription pain killers.  Yet people chug it down with reckless abandon. Looking at the expression of this Mickey’s Malt Liquor tester one might...

The Used Goods Question Retail sales in several countries like Germany, Japan and Switzerland continue to fall or they remain steady for years. In the United States they have strongly risen recently. We should remind readers, that used goods sold via Ebay or similar, are not contained in this statistics. Still they create economic value for the purchases. By mentality, Swiss, Germans or Japanese pay more attention so...