SNB & CHF

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.10% to 1.1443 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 04(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates The US dollar has a softer tone today, and it was that way even for the European PMI. The greenback eased further after the upside momentum faded yesterday. The heavier tone in Asia seemed spurred by a hedge fund manager’s call that...

Time is the soul of money, the long-view – its immortality. Hard assets are forever, even when destroyed by the cataclysms of history. It is the outlook that perpetuated the most competent and powerful aristocracies in continental Europe, well up through World War I and, in certain prominent cases, beyond; it is the mindset that has sustained the most fiscally serious democratic republic in the Western world, that of...

– Safe haven silver to outperform gold in Q4 and 2018 – “Expect silver to eventually outperform gold” say Metals Focus– 2017 YTD, silver has underperformed gold, climbing by 5% versus 11%– Silver undervalued versus gold and especially stocks, bonds and many property markets– Will follow gold’s reactions to macroeconomic & geopolitical factors and should outperform gold– Special report on India shows it accounts for...

Japan is a global leader is how to gracefully manage stagnation. Although our leadership is too polite to say it out loud, they’ve embraced stagnation as the new quasi-official policy. The reason is tragi-comically obvious: any real reform would threaten the income streams gushing into untouchably powerful self-serving elites and fiefdoms. In our pay-to-play centralized form of governance, any reform that threatens the...

There is nothing inevitable about such vast, fast-rising income-wealth inequality; it is the only possible output of our financial and pay-to-play political system. One chart defines the 21st century economy and thus its socio-political system: the chart of soaring wealth/income inequality. This chart doesn’t show a modest widening in the gap between the super-wealthy (top 1/10th of 1%) and everyone else: there is a...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Fat-Boy Waves The prices of the metals dropped $17 and $0.35, and the gold-silver ratio rose to 77.  A look at the chart of either metal shows that a downtrend in prices (i.e. uptrend in the dollar) that began in mid-April reversed in mid-July. Then the prices began rising (i.e. dollar began falling). But that move ended...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.17% to 1.1452 CHF EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 03(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Firm US interest rates and a strong manufacturing ISM yesterday help support the greenback, while disappointing construction PMI in the UK weighs on sterling. The euro briefly slipped below $1.17 in Asia for the first time in six weeks. It...

(summary of presentation  based on my book, Political Economy of Tomorrow, delivered to Bank Credit Analyst conference yesterday) Alice laughed. There is no use trying; she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.” I dare say you haven’t had much practice, said the queen. When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. — Lewis...

Today we’ll continue to size up the bull market in governmental promises. As we do so, keep an old trader’s slogan in mind: “That which cannot go on forever, won’t.” Or we could say it differently: An unsustainable trend must eventually stop. Lately I have focused on the trend in US public pension funds, many of which are woefully underfunded and will never be able to pay workers the promised benefits, at least without...

– Gold climbs over 12% in YTD, matching S&P500 performance– Palladium best performing market, surges 36% 2017 YTD– Gold outperforms Nikkei 225, Euro Stoxx 50, FTSE and ISEQ– Geo-political concerns including Trump and North Korea supporting gold– Safe haven demand should push gold higher in Q4 – Owning physical gold not dependent on third party websites and technology remains essential Year to Date Relative...