SNB & CHF

The US dollar is trading with a heavier bias today amid some last minute position squaring ahead of the key events of the week, which are stacked in the second half.  The ECB meeting and US jobs data are the two most important events in a jam packed week for most participants.   The recent pattern has been for new lows in the euro to be greeted with a bit of profit-taking.  This pattern is holding.  New lows were made yesterday just below $1.0560, and short-covering lifted it to nearly...

Nuclear waste experts are looking for possible sites for deep geological repositories for atomic waste and are using vibrator vehicles that generate weak seismic waves. (SRF/swissinfo.ch) --- swissinfo.ch is the international branch of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its role is to report on Switzerland and to provide a Swiss perspective on international events. For more articles, interviews and videos visit swissinfo.ch or subscribe to our YouTube channel: Website:...

Unless you’re living under a rock, you know that we have an administered interest rate. This means that the bureaucrats at the Federal Reserve decide what’s good for the little people. Then they impose it on us. In trying to return to freedom, many people wonder why couldn’t we let the market set the interest rate. After all, we don’t have a Corn Control Agency or a Lumber Board (pun intended). So why do we have a Federal Open Market Committee? It’s a very good question. Someone asked it...

I had the privilege of being on CNBC to discuss the significance of China being included in the IMF's Special Drawing Right. Here is the link to the discussion.  The decision was announced shortly after the interview on CNBC.  It was largely a foregone conclusion that China would join.  Besides the confirmation, the new news was in the weighting.   China's yuan got an almost 11% share of the new SDR that will be launched 1 October 2016.  The room for the yuan comes comes mostly at the...

The decline in the labor force participation rate helps explain the substantial decline in the US unemployment rate over the past couple of years.  That decline has helped bring the Federal Reserve to the point that a December rate hike is thought to be extremely likely barring a significant disappointment at the end of the week with the November jobs report.   This Great Graphic was posted on Ritholtz's Big Picture Blog and was compiled by Deutsche Bank's Torsten Slok from BLS data.  ...

(from my colleagues Dr. Win Thin and Ilan Solot) This is set to be one of the most important weeks of the year. EM is likely to take a backseat between the ECB monetary policy decision, the OPEC meeting and the US jobs report. That said, there are several potential sources of idiosyncratic risk to key an eye on. There could be more headline risks from the Russia-Turkey situation. Some think that the leader of Brazilian lower house may bring forward the impeachment process this week,...

The US dollar remains firm against most of the major currencies to start what promises to be a critical week for investors.  There are two main considerations.  The first is the last minute position adjustments ahead the key events that begin with the IMF's SDR decision later today, running through the start-of the month data (especially PMIs), central bank meetings in Australia, Canada, and then the big one, the ECB.   The US monthly jobs report and the OPEC meeting cap the weeks.  The...

In this holiday-shortened week (Thanksgiving), the price of gold dropped $20 and silver 10 cents. Friday, when the price dropped the most, could not have had much liquidity as most Americans were out of work shopping or partying. Whatever they may have been buying, it sure wasn’t gold. We might be inclined to take the basis data this week with a grain of salt. Here’s the graph of the metals’ prices. The Prices of Gold and Silver We are interested in the changing equilibrium created when...

The week ahead is among the most important of the year.  Rarely is there such a confluence of events in a short period that will have far-reaching implications for investors that are known ahead of time and have been discussed so extensively.   One implications of this is that there are expectations that have been discounted by the market. The potential for sharp price gyrations and the dictates of money management should not distract from the big picture and the durable trends.  In this...

Bar a disastrous NFP print this coming Friday the US Federal Reserve will change the target range for the Federal Reserve (Fed) Bank’s Funds rate from the current level of zero – 25bp to 25 – 50bp on December 16th.  The Fed will effectively raise the overnight interbank rate of interest to around 30bp from an average of only 12bp in 2015. Ironically, that will be seven years, to the day, when the Fed first lowered rates to the current band. During the period of ZIRP madness, the Fed’s...