SNB & CHF

Central banks are powerful entities -- of this, there is no doubt. As of late, however, they have gone from powerful to almost omnipotent. Markets hang on their every word, and even minuscule changes in rhetoric, implied or explicit, have monumental impacts on how participants position themselves. Since March, the “Fed's got your back” mantra has rocketed markets to new all-time highs. Now, there are two questions to be had. First, what role will central banks play moving forward...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.04% to 1.0816 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, January 11(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Julius Ceasar is said to have “crossed the Rubicon” on January 10, 49 BCE, taking the 13th Legion into Rome, defying orders from the Senate, and precipitating the Roman Civil Wat that marked the end of the republic and the birth of the empire. Last week’s events paled in comparison...

The number of Covid cases went down significantly in Switzerland during spring as a result of schools closing, according to a study by ETH Zurich, reported RTS. School closed ©Andrey Zhuravlev -Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge Researchers at the university analysed anonymised mobile phone data of 1.5 billion movements of the Swiss population between 10 February and 26 April 2020. They used this data to calculate how much certain measures reduced mobility and...

If we have indeed begun a sustained “reversal of fortune”, it might be prudent to consider the possibility we’re only in the first inning of a sustained run of back luck.In our self-deluded hubris, we reckon we’ve moved beyond the influence of fortune, a.k.a. Lady Luck: our technologies are so powerful and our monetary policies so godlike that nothing as random as luck could ever crush our limitless expansion. Thus does hubris beg for a comeuppance: the greater the...

The aim of such attacks is usually to force organisations to cease operations or to extort ransom money Keystone / Sascha Steinbach Several security bodies in Switzerland have been targeted by emails that appear to come from official organisations such as banks or the police and contain a password for a zip file. When this file is opened, the computer becomes infected with a trojan called Emotet. The Bern cantonal police force is one institution that has been...

Like me you are probably looking over photos of supposed Trump supporters breaching the ramparts and storming the Capitol yesterday. That is if you can find them. To “protect” us from viewing these incredibly “disturbing” scenes, Twitter has helpfully announced that it will severely restrict their distribution across its network. We can all rest easier, I suppose. Though even memory-addled Americans may recall the free-for-all in posting BLM and Antifa violence on...

On Wednesday, a mob apparently composed of Trump supporters forced its way past US Capitol security guards and briefly moved unrestrained through much of the capitol building. They displayed virtually no organization and no clear goals. The only deaths were on the side of the mob, with one woman—apparently unarmed—shot dead by panicky and trigger-happy capitol police, with three others suffering non-specific “medical emergencies.” Yet, the media response has been to...

Between November 1998 and February 1999, Japan’s government bond (JGB) market was utterly decimated. You want to find an historical example of a real bond rout (no caps nor exclamations necessary), take a look at what happened during those three exhilarating (if you were a government official) months. The JGB 10-year yield had dropped to a low of just 77.2 bps during the depths of 1998’s Asian Financial Crisis (or “flu”, so noted for its regional contagious dollar...

Is the nine-month copper price blastoff due to monetary reasons (central bank printing, government budget deficits) or fundamental reasons (supply and demand)? Jeff Snider explains the fundamental backdrop (along with speculative fever) but dismisses monetary motives. ----------SPONSOR---------- But first, this from Eurodollar Enterprises! Friends, are you confused by the financial press? Are the pretty people on Bloomberg speaking in paradox? Are the esteemed pages of The Economist...

© Sylvain Robin | Dreamstime.com Despite the economic impacts of the coronavirus, significantly fewer Swiss companies went bankrupt in 2020 than the year before, according to the business data company Bisnode. During 2020, 3,811 Swiss companies filed for bankruptcy, 19% fewer than in 2019. Sectors that experienced the greatest fall in bankruptcies include artisans (-174 bankruptcies), hotels and restaurants (-124), retailers (-68) and wholesalers (-66). The slowdown...