SNB & CHF

A popular quote from Nicolás Gómez Dávila, “Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies,” reflects the idea that a healthy and mature society should not be preoccupied with constantly creating new laws, prescribing to itself a cocktail of legislative remedies to fix its mounting problems. An over-lawyered society is a society in decay. Everything is disputed. There are sharp divisions, exacerbated by a dishonest and hypocritical façade of...

Or we can let the bubble implode under its own weight and have a plan ready to clean house when the dust settles. Thanks to recency bias, we tend to think the world has always been more or less as it is today. Tectonic shifts beneath the veneer of everyday life escape us unless we make a concerted effort to peel back the veneer of normalcy. For example, consider the rise of finance as the dominant force in our socio-economic / political status quo. Statistics...

Gold slips as China’s stimulus efforts fail to ease deflationary pressures. Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari’s comments on modest rate cuts and a strong labor market further support the Greenback. Geopolitical tensions, including Israel’s response to Hezbollah and Iran, continue to influence Bullion prices, with traders eyeing US economic data later this week. Gold price retraces after hitting a daily high of $2,666 on Monday as China’s...

USD/CHF continues rising and might have established a medium-term uptrend.  It is likely to continue higher although it is potentially overbought and a downside gap risks closing.  USD/CHF is rising up and forming a sequence of higher highs and higher lows which indicates it is probably in both a short and – now also – a medium term uptrend. Given it is a key tenet of technical analysis that “the trend is your friend” the odds favor more upside...

The EU has tightened rules on greenwashing. Keystone-SDA Listen to the article Listening the article Toggle language selector...

Most experts agree that, through the manipulation of the short-term interest rates, the central bank can also determine the direction of the long-term interest rates. Some popular thinking alleges that the long-term interest rates are the average of the present and the expected short-term interest rates. Hence, it would appear that the central bank is the key in determining the interest rates. But is this valid?Individual time preferences and interest ratesAccording...

Business travel will prevent the updating of the blog in the coming days.  It resumes October 19 with the Week Ahead.  Overview:  The lack of details from China's fiscal briefing, the soft CPI (and deeper PPI deflation), and a smaller than expected trade surplus did not prevent Chinese equities from advancing (CSI 300 +1.9%). Industrial commodities, such as oil, copper, iron ore, are mixed. Among the G10 currencies, the Australian dollar often acts as the China...

Givaudan invests CHF 50 million in Indonesia Keystone-SDA Listen to the article Listening the article Toggle language selector...

The official theme song of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign is “Freedom” by Beyonce. But a more accurate theme would be the Rolling Stones classic, Under my Thumb. Vice President Harris is seeking the presidency as the greatest champion of freedom in modern times. But Kamala-style freedom will only unleash the government, not private citizens.The original Bill of Rights created a row of bulwarks for citizens to prevent government oppression. In the era of the...

Cries of “Trump is Hitler!” and attempted assassinations have dominated coverage of the upcoming presidential elections. This deprives an intriguing issue of attention. An August 24th New York Times article by culture columnist Claire Cain Miller states the issue: “In some ways, this presidential election has become a referendum on gender roles.” Gender gaps between how men and women vote are not new. But “it is now close to, or certainly in the ballpark of, the...