SNB & CHF

We are about to start a painful learning process about what is “impossible” and what is inevitable. Two charts illustrate Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform: this chart of the S-Curve of financialization, leverage, debt, central planning, regulatory capture and globalization–that is, the engines of modern “growth”–depicts the inevitable stagnation and decline of these dynamics as overcapacity, debt...

Summary: Fitch cut Italy’s rating outlook to negative from stable, while DBRS left Portugal’s rating and outlook unchanged. Europe and Canada’s free trade negotiations broke down, but many seem to be making exaggerating the significance of the drama. Japan and Australia report inflation figures, and both are exceptions to the generalization that price pressures are rising in (most) high income countries....

Summary: Fitch cut Italy’s rating outlook to negative from stable, while DBRS left Portugal’s rating and outlook unchanged. Europe and Canada’s free trade negotiations broke down, but many seem to be making exaggerating the significance of the drama. Japan and Australia report inflation figures, and both are exceptions to the generalization that price pressures are rising in (most) high income countries. There...

Nous savions que la crise avait laminé les finances des Etats, de l’économie publique et des familles. Jusque là rien de nouveau.Mais en finance, quand quelqu’un perd, il y a en général quelqu’un d’autre qui gagne la même somme et peut-être plus. A moins qu’il ne s’agisse de billets physiques que l’on flambe, c’est comme ça. Nous allons donc nous intéresser aux grands gagnants de la crise financière. S’il y en a...

“It is not surprising the Fed once again failed to take action as their expectations for economic growth were once again lowered. In fact, as I have noted previously, the Federal Reserve are the worst economic forecasters on the planet. As shown in the table/chart below, not only are the expectations for economic growth now the lowest on record, the Fed has given up on 2% growth for the economy with the long-run...

  The Crazies Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who was once laudably referred to as “Maestro” for his supposed astute stewardship of U.S. monetary policy, commented last week on the nation’s current political and economic climate: “We’re not in a stable equilibrium.  I hope we can all find a way out because this too great a country to be undermined, by how should I say it, crazies.”* Help! The crazies...

The net short Swiss Franc position against the dollar has risen to levels seen before the breakdown of the EUR/CHF floor. Short CHF has increased from short 9.4 K contracts to 16.4 K contracts. Before the end of the peg, in December 2014, speculators  were short CHF by 20-25 K contracts. This big short position got repeated only once at the end of 2015, when the Fed was supposed to hike rates, but finally did not....

Swiss Franc Currency Index The Swiss Franc index was lagging once again compared to the dollar index. The dollar index is up exactly 3% this month, while the CHF index is down 2%. The EUR/CHF has reached the SNB intervention area at the “new floor area of 1.08 to 1.0850. On Monday we will learn about the latest SNB interventions in our weekly sight deposits. Trade-weighted index Swiss Franc, October 22 2016(see...

Am 15. Januar 2015 hat die Schweizerische Nationalbank (SNB) erstmals Negativzinsen anstelle des Mindestkurses eingeführ. Unmittelbar danach stürzte der Euro um 20 Prozent ab und erholte sich seither auf knapp 1.10 zum Franken. Klarer und eindeutiger kann man nicht vordemonstriert bekommen, dass Negativzinsen den Euro nicht stärken, den Franken nicht schwächen. Negativzinsen bringen nichts – ausser Gewinne für die...

Roche Holding AG’s third-quarter revenue rose 4.5 percent as its trio of breast-cancer therapies offset stagnating sales of some of its older drugs. Sales climbed to 12.5 billion Swiss francs ($12.6 billion), the Basel, Switzerland-based company said in a statement on Thursday. That compared with the 12.6 billion-franc average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Roche doesn’t report third-quarter...