SNB & CHF

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. New Chief Monetary Bureaucrat Goes from Good to Bad for Silver The prices of the metals ended all but unchanged last week, though they hit spike highs on Thursday. Particularly silver his $17.24 before falling back 43 cents, to close at $16.82. Never drop silver carelessly, since it might land on your toes. If you are at...

– UK economy outlook bleak amid Brexit, debt woes and rising inflation – Confidence in UK housing market at five-year low – UK high street sales crash at fastest rate since 2009– Number registering as insolvent in England and Wales hit a five-year high in Q3 – UK public finance hole of almost £20bn in the public finances set to grow to £36bn by 2021-22– Protect your savings with gold in the face of increased financial...

The good news is that the economy just printed its second consecutive quarter of 3% growth, a feat not accomplished since Q2 and Q3 2014. The bad news is that the growth spurt in 2014 was better, quantitatively and qualitatively. Those two quarters produced gains of 4.6% and 5.2% (annualized) in GDP, much better than the most recent 3.1% and 3% prints of Q2 and Q3 2017. And it took a hurricane to get the most recent...

The economy is booming. Employment is at decade lows. Unemployment claims are at the lowest levels in 40-years. The stock market is at record highs and climbing. Consumers are more confident than they have been in a decade. Wages are finally showing signs of growth. What’s not to love? I just have one question. If things are so good, then why is America’s saving rate posting such a sharp decline? The answer is not...

Japanese Market About to Break Out The Japanese stock market is quite unique: it would need to rally by approximately 80% to reach its former historical peak. What’s more, said peak was attained on the final trading day of 1989, more than 25 years ago. In short, Japanese stocks have been anything but a good investment in recent years. Conversely this means that the market has a lot of potential if it were to return to...

European GDP rose 0.6% quarter-over-quarter in Q3 2017, the eighteenth consecutive increase for the Continental (EA 19) economy. That latter result is being heralded as some sort of achievement, though the 0.6% is also to a lesser degree. The truth is that neither is meaningful, and that Europe’s economy continues toward instead the abyss. At 0.6%, that doesn’t even equal the average growth rate exhibited from either...

Gold mining production in China fell by 9.8% in H1 2017  Decreasing mine supply in world’s largest gold producer and across the globe GFMS World Gold Survey predicts mine production to contract year-on-year Peak gold production being seen in Australia, world’s no 2 producer Peak gold production globally while global gold demand remains robust China Gold Mine Production 1H 2016 vs 1H 2017 - Click to enlarge Gold...

The ABB plant in Meyrin, Geneva. (Keystone) The ABB electronics group announced on Monday the offshoring of up to 150 positions from its Geneva production centre, while Roche is cutting 235 people in canton Aargau. Employees and trade unions reacted angrily. Rumoured to be in the works for some weeks, the Zurich-headquartered ABB group announced on Monday that it would be relocating positions from its Geneva plant to a...

While Bitcoin bulls will probably never have it so good as they have in 2017, we wonder whether many of them have stopped to think about the environmental downside of this roaring bull market. After all, back in the dot.com boom, people had ideas about potential internet businesses, issued pieces of paper representing ownership and watched their prices go parabolic parabolic. All it took was a Powerpoint presentation,...

This interaction will spark a runaway feedback loop that will smack asset valuations back to pre-bubble, pre-pyramid scheme levels. According to the conventional economic forecast, interest rates will stay near-zero essentially forever due to slow growth. And since growth is slow, inflation will also remain neutral. This forecast is little more than an extension of the trends of the past 30+ years: a secular decline in...