SNB & CHF

Last night, Autodata reported its first estimates for September auto sales in the US. According to its own as well as those compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (the same government outfit which keeps track of GDP), vehicle sales have been sliding overall ever since April. For a couple months in the middle of Uncle Sam’s helicopter-fed frenzy, the number of vehicle units had surged to a high of more than 18 million (seasonally-adjusted annual rate) in both...

Simona Aebersold is 23 but has been running through forests and fields since she was a kid - her mom and dad are former top athletes and got her into orienteering very young. A 7-times world championship medallist, Simona is also a student at the University of Bern, where she's getting a degree in Sports science and Psychology. We met her in her garden, and she told us how she manages to balance her training sessions, competitions and exams. --- swissinfo.ch is the international branch of...

Recent polling data from Alignable reveals a difficult small-business environment. Three regional Fed surveys confirm the softness. Is it merely the passing Delta-Covid? Or the labor-shortage? Will demand in 2022 be able to meet the oncoming wave of goods orders? A reading, by Emil Kalinowski. ----------WHO---------- Jeff Snider of Alhambra Investments. Read by Emil Kalinowski. Art by David Parkins. Intro/outro is "Deadlines" by Dylan Sitts at Epidemic Sound....

Credit Suisse says police raids were not targeted at the bank itself. Keystone-sda-ats Ag Switzerland Swiss police have raided the offices of Credit Suisse and seized documents relating to the collapse of its $10bn fund range linked to Greensill Capital. The police searches were conducted at the request of Zürich’s cantonal public prosecutor earlier this week. The prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation into Greensill’s activities and the way in which Credit...

Can you remember back to when you were two or three years old? Toddlers often think that there are little people inside the TV (or maybe this was only true when the TV was about as deep as it was wide—and maybe kids today don’t think this when looking at a 60-inch flatscreen…) Anyways, it’s normal to grow out of this naïve view of television. No one believes it past the age of eight, much less into adulthood. Purchasing Power and Intrinsicism This is a simple...

The vast majority of market participants are about as ready for a semi-random “volatility event” as the dinosaurs were for the meteor strike that doomed them to oblivion. Judging by euphoric gambler–oops I mean “investor”–sentiment and measures of volatility, risk of a market drop has been near-zero for the past 18 months. But risk was never actually low, it was only hidden. When it emerges, it’s a surprise only to those who mistakenly thought risk had vanished. As...

It’s now been more than eighteen months since governments began the new social experiment now known as “lockdowns.” Prior to 2020, forced “social distancing” was generally considered to be too costly in societal terms to justify such a risky experiment. Yet in 2020, led by health technocrats at the World Health Organization, nearly all national governments in the world suddenly and without precedent embraced the idea of lockdowns. On the other hand, the Swedish...

US factories are humming along, constrained only by supply issues which might occasionally limit production. That’s the story, anyway. There’s too much business because of them, manufacturers taking in only more orders by the day leaving them struggling to catch up. But what kind of stuff is it that is being ordered from our nation’s factories? Without thinking too much about it, you’d probably say that they’re ridiculously busy trying as best as possible to fill...

ASSET ALLOCATION We maintain our tactically neutral position on equities, with the notable exception of Japan, where we see scope for a re-start to Abenomics and for Japanese stocks to continue to close their performance gap with their peers in other developed markets. Though recourse to options trades, we are prepared for an increase in volatility as markets adjust to slowing growth momentum. While they may consolidate in the short term, we remain broadly optimistic...

Like the bond market and the yield curve, the inventory situation is most often forward-looking. Powell is tapering and ignoring the potential of an inventory overhang, pretty much the same way as a few years ago. A reading, by Emil Kalinowski. ----------WHO---------- Jeff Snider of Alhambra Investments. Read by Emil Kalinowski. Art by David Parkins. Intro/outro is "36mm" by Jobii at Epidemic Sound. ----------WHAT---------- Revisiting The Last Overhang: https://bit.ly/3isH5Nk...