SNB & CHF

Few seem alive to the potentially consequential financial risks arising from uncertainties evolving in China. One thing we know rather definitively is that markets don’t like uncertainty: uncertainty is Kryptonite to markets. Another thing we know is that the events unfolding in China are generating uncertainty on multiple levels.Whatever policy decisions are made, the potential consequences generate waves of profound uncertainty. Should authorities respond to...

The head of Credit Suisse’s Swiss division says that only a few clients are actually closing accounts at the bank. His comments after the troubled bank reported high customer fund withdrawals globally. “Some clients have withdrawn part of their funds, but only very few have actually closed their accounts,”  the CEO of Credit Suisse’s Swiss unit, André Helfenstein, said in an interview published in the SonntagsZeitung and Le Matin Dimanche. “We have only lost...

As of 2022 the national student debt reached $1.6 trillion with the average student loan debt at about $28,000. Many former college students are discovering it is difficult to pay back such a large amount of debt. This is especially true of students that graduate with fruitless degrees like sociology, for example. These majors are only good as prerequisites to a master’s degree. Most graduates find themselves working jobs that are completely unrelated to their...

Late in 2018, curves were crazy, the economy seemed to be heading for trouble yet in December the Fed hiked rates anyway. Just a few short weeks later, however, policymakers changed their tune. History repeats because the FOMC is too stubborn to listen to what really matters. Eurodollar University's Weekly Recap, featuring Steve Van Metre Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIP https://www.eurodollar.university https://www.marketsinsiderpro.com https://www.PortfolioShield.net...

We think the US dollar has put in a significant high. However, the near-term technical readings are stretched. The dollar's bounce from November 15 to November 21 met or approached minimum retracement targets, but the momentum indicators did not correct. These conflicting impulses need to be navigated in the days ahead. On balance, we look for a firmer greenback, which we see as corrective. That is the prism through which we look at the price action. At the same...

Two high-frequency economic reports stand out in the week ahead:  The US November employment report and the preliminary eurozone CPI. The Federal Reserve has deftly distanced itself from any one employment report. As a result, it would take a significant miss of the median forecast (Bloomberg survey) to alter market expectations for a 50 bp hike when the FOMC meeting concludes on December 14.Economists are looking for around a 200k increase in US non-farm payrolls...

[Originally published August 13, 2008] It’s been 75 years since the federal government, on the spurious grounds of fighting the Great Depression, ordered the confiscation of all monetary gold from Americans, permitting trivial amounts for ornamental or industrial use. This happens to be one of the episodes Kevin Gutzman and I describe in detail in our new book, Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush. From the...

Major, sweeping inversion. WTI contango. In 2018, these warnings happened just prior to the Fed being forced out of its rate hike plans for 2019 because the economy and markets were more and more messed up. Before those, however, there was another huge shakeup...from China. All the same numbers are coming up in Nov '22, including the latest today...from China. Eurodollar University's Money & Macro Analysis Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIP https://www.eurodollar.university...

In an earlier article, I explained that the collapse in the long-dated UK government bond (or gilts) market on September 28 that followed the ill-fated Kwarteng “mini budget” of a few days earlier had exposed a hitherto underappreciated problem: UK pension schemes were massively exposed to changes in long-dated gilts rates. The week after the mini budget, the gilts market became very unsettled. To quote the Financial Times: Huge shifts in bond prices were leaving...

Austrian crypto platform Bitpanda has received a full operating license from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority or BaFin for the custody and proprietary trading of crypto assets. Bitpanda claims to be the first European retail investment platform to obtain the license which was introduced by BaFin in 2020, allowing it to actively market and offer services in the German market. Founded in 2014, Bitpanda now has nearly four million investors on its...