SNB & CHF

Swiss Franc Once again, CHF is one of the strongest performers on the FX market. Next Monday we will report how much the Swiss National Bank had to intervene in our regular “Weekly SNB sight deposits” report. See the Dukascopy Video FX Rates The US dollar weakened in the first half of the week as participants continued to react to the shockingly poor jobs report and shift in Fed expectations. However, it...

Well that escalated quickly…All-time highs within reach… everything is awesome…wait what… Quite a week: Gold +5.25% in last 2 weeks – best run in 4 months Silver +5.65% this week – best week since May 2015 Copper -4% this week to lowest weekly close since January Sterling -2.5% in last 2 weeks – worst drop in 3 months US Dollar Index +0.6% – up 7 of last 9 weeks 30Y Yields -21bps in last 8 days – best rally in 4...

Well that escalated quickly…All-time highs within reach… everything is awesome…wait what… Quite a week: Gold +5.25% in last 2 weeks – best run in 4 months Silver +5.65% this week – best week since May 2015 Copper -4% this week to lowest weekly close since January Sterling -2.5% in last 2 weeks – worst drop in 3 months US Dollar Index +0.6% – up 7 of last 9 weeks 30Y Yields -21bps in last 8 days – best rally in 4...

China granted US asset managers a CNY250 bln ($38 bln) quota under the existing QFII system Bank of Korea surprised the market by delivering a 25 bp rate cut to 1.25% Oman issued its first global bond since 1997 Polish President Duda softened his CHF loan conversion plan Central Bank of Russia resumed its easing cycle with a 50 bp cut to 10.5% There appears to have been a significant change in FX strategy from the...

Beyond Human Capacity Distilling down and projecting out the economy’s limitless spectrum of interrelationships is near impossible to do with any regular accuracy.  The inputs are too vast.  The relationships are too erratic. Quite frankly, keeping tabs on it all is beyond human capacity.  This also goes for the federal government.  Even with all their data gatherers and number crunchers they are incapable of...

Many people understand politics and economics to be two different disciplines. I remember in graduate school more than two decades ago, many colleagues and professors operationally defined political economy as how politics, by which they meant the state, screws up economics. I spoke at the Fixed Income Leaders Summit earlier this week and teased that many seemed to think that politics comes from the ancient Greek “poly”...

The German Bund chart is very important for us, because the Swiss franc is negatively correlated to German government bond yields. The lower Bund yields, the stronger the Swiss Franc. When European governments and the ECB are ready to pay higher interest rates, then CHF depreciates. 10-year Gilt yield, Close on 06/12 Whether it is due to rising, or receding, fears of Brexit, earlier today UK Gilts joined the global...

Swiss Franc The euro continues to weaken against the franc at 1.0922. But the speed of the descent has slowed. The dollar is stronger, in particular against EUR, CHF and AUD. The ECB bond buying program has finally started.  For us the main reason of the weaker Euro was, however, the bad US jobs report, that will delay also a normalization of rates in the euro zone. via Dukascopy FX Rates The US dollar is posting...

A Convocation Of Gamblers The Wall Street Journal and BloombergView have just run articles on the shadow banking system in China.  This has put me in a nostalgic mood. About 35 years ago when I was living in Japan, I made a side trip to Hong Kong. I took the hydrofoil to Macau one afternoon and the same service back early the next morning.  On the morning trip, I am sure that I saw many of the same faces that I saw...

  Home of the Brave? BALTIMORE – It is a bright summer day outside. A dry breeze sweeps down Cathedral Street and blows away the hot, humid air. It is hard for us to imagine that anything bad could happen today. But bad things do happen – even on nice days. The weather was fine when General Custer rode out to the Little Bighorn, too. Over the weekend, we worked at putting up a board fence – with half-round treated...