SNB & CHF

Summary: The Australian dollar’s technical condition has soured. Market sentiment may be changing as the MSCI World Index of developed equities posted a key reversal yesterday. It is not clear yet whether the Aussie is correcting lower or whether there has been a trend change. Since late July, I have been looking for the Australian dollar to turn lower. Instead, the Aussie has continued to climb.  It has risen...

(I write a monthly column for a Chinese paper.  Here is a draft of it) It is as if Hamlet, the confused prince of Denmark, has taken up residence in Beijing. The famed-prince wrestled with “seeming” and “being”. So are Chinese officials. They seem to be relaxing their control over financial markets but are they really?  Are they tolerating market forces because they approve what they are doing, such as driving interest...

The vulnerability of global food production to extremes of weather is a profound reality that few grasp. Given the current abundance of food globally, confidence in permanent food surpluses and low grain prices is high. Few worry that the present abundance of food could be temporary. But the global food supply is more fragile than we might think, despite historically low grain/agricultural commodity prices. Both corn...

On a firmly rising gold price the UK is one of the largest net importers of gold in 2016. The gold price went up 25 % from $1,061.5 dollars per troy ounce on January 1 to $1,325.8 on June 31. Over this period the UK net imported 583 tonnes and GLD inventory mushroomed by 308 tonnes. In the month of June the UK gross imported 154.2 tonnes, up 22 % from May, and gross export was 1.9 tonnes, down 37 % from the previous...

Summary: This technical pattern is most often a reversal pattern, but not always. It may be a continuation pattern in the dollar against the yen. It highlights the importance of the JPY100 level and warns of risk toward JPY92.50. It aligns well with the sequence of macro events. This Great Graphic was created on Bloomberg.  I use it to illustrate a possible head and shoulder pattern that has been carved by the...

Swiss Franc Click to enlarge. FX Rates The US dollar is being sold across the board today. The US Dollar Index is off 0.65% late in the European morning, which, if sustained, would make it the largest drop in two weeks. The proximate cause being cited by participants and the media is weak US data that is prompting a Fed re-think. However, we are a bit skeptical. It is not that the US data has been strong, or that...

Deposit bail-in risks are slowly being realised in Ireland, after it emerged overnight that FBD, one of Ireland’s largest insurance companies, have been moving cash out of Irish bank deposits and into bonds. Revelations regarding deposit bail-in risks came in the wake of warnings of a new property crash centred on the housing market in Ireland. The former deputy governor of the Central Bank warned in an op-ed in a...

Second Half Recovery Dented by “Resurgent Consumer” We normally don’t comment in real time on individual economic data releases. Generally we believe it makes more sense to occasionally look at a bigger picture overview, once at least some of the inevitable revisions have been made. The update we posted last week (“US Economy, Something is Not Right”) is an example. We’ll make an exception today though. Our friend...

Swiss Franc The Swiss Franc was nearly unchanged against the euro. Click to enlarge. FX Rates The US dollar closed the pre-weekend session well off its lows that were seen in response to the disappointing retail sales report. It has been unable to sustain the upside momentum, and as North American dealers prepare to return to their posts, it is trading lower against most of the major currencies. The notable...

Summary: Some romanticists want to have another Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime. Bretton Woods had difficulty from nearly the day it went operational. It is misguided to think a new rigid regime is needed or is appropriate. Today is the anniversary of the final blow to the dollar-gold standard. By August 15, 1971, the exchange of dollars for gold was limited to central banks, and US President...