SNB & CHF

Summary: RBA meeting is a close call. BOE meeting consensus on rate cut, maybe new QE and lending-for-funding. More details of Japan’s fiscal policy. U.S. jobs data. After this week, and outside of RBNZ rate cut, August may be uneventful. There are four events this week that will command the attention of global investors. The Reserve of Bank of Australia is first.It is a close call, though the median in the...

Seasonality of gold and silver In the Six Major Fundamental Factors that Determine Gold and Silver Prices we have learned that prices of gold and silver  represent the growth difference between Europe and the Emerging Markets on one side and the United States on the other. When the former two are weak, then gold prices tend to fall. When the U.S. economy is weak, however, then gold prices tend to rise. While...

Swiss Franc Currency Index The Swiss Franc continued its bad performance against the dollar index that started with Brexit until the middle of the week. From the mid of the week the two indices converged again, because the U.S. had two bad data releases: Click to enlarge. Swiss Franc Currency Index (3 years) The Swiss Franc index is the trade-weighted currency performance (see the currency basket) On a three...

There does not seem to be a large pattern in the speculative position adjustments in the CFTC reporting week ending July 26.  There was only one significant position adjustment (10k of more contracts). Euro The euro bears added another 10.3k contracts to their gross short position, which brought it to 221.8k contracts. This is this is the largest gross short position since early January.  It is the fifth...

Imagine the financial crisis knocked you out and you did not wake up from the coma that followed until this day. Then, presented with the following three charts you were asked to guess where the federal funds rate was trading. Given the fact that the core CPI is on a steep uptrend and currently over the arbitrarily set 2 per cent target; unemployment below what the FOMC regards as full employment and; GDP running at a...

SMI The Swiss Market Index and global stock markets failed to extend last week’s rally after the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan left rates unchanged and gave mixed messages about the global economic outlook. Japanese Economic Stimulus Japanese shares received a short-term boost after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s announced plans of a 28 trillion yen ($265 billion) economic stimulus drive, including a 13 trillion...

Indonesian President Widodo shuffled his cabinet Egypt has requested a three-year $12 bln loan from the IMF Johannesburg Stock Exchange data on investment flows into South Africa was wrong Fitch downgraded South Africa’s local currency rating by one notch to BBB- with a stable outlook Fitch cut its outlook on Colombia’s BBB rating from stable to negative In the EM equity space as measured by MSCI, Turkey (+4.8%),...

This Great Graphic was composed on Bloomberg, and it shows the performance of bank share indices of the major bourses.  The time series are indexed to 100 at the start of this year. The green line, which is off about 6.6% this year is the MSCI US bank index.   The yellow line is the MSCI European bank index. It is off 25% this year.   The white line is the Topix bank shares.  It is fallen 30% this year, even with...

UBS Group AG beat analysts’ second-quarter profit estimates and said it’s on track to cut costs by 2.1 billion Swiss francs ($2.2 billion) through 2017, with Chief Executive Officer Sergio Ermotti struggling with a slump at the wealth management and securities-trading units. © Denis Linine | Dreamstime.com Net income slipped to 1.03 billion francs from 1.2 billion francs a year ago, the Zurich-based bank said in a...

Prospects for the Swiss Economy Remain Favourable The KOF Economic Barometer has only changed little and reached a value of 102.7 in July. In June, and therefore before the referendum in the United Kingdom about its membership in the EU, the KOF Economic Barometer stood at a value of 102.6 (revised from 102.4). Thus the Barometer has been standing above the historical average since February this year. Despite the...