SNB & CHF

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.27% to 1.0999 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, May 19(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: A setback in commodities and technology are roiling equity markets today. The inability of US equities to sustain yesterday’s rally provided an initial headwind to trading in the Asia Pacific region today. Hong Kong and South Korea markets were closed for holidays, but most of the...

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Bias vs. Logic We’ve written elsewhere about the ironic over-use of logic to justify otherwise illogical biases. As Swiss-based precious metals professionals who see physical gold and silver as currency protection outside of an openly illogical (and dangerously fractured) banking system, it is more than fair for some to challenge our own “logic” (bias?) when it comes to precious metal ownership. We understand...

While rich Swiss residents figure in Bloomberg’s top 500 world’s wealthiest, there are nine Americans in the top ten slot. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally In the latest version of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, eight Swiss or Swiss-resident names figure among the 500 richest people in the world. The richest of the Alpine-based billionaires is Geneva-based Ernesto Bertarelli, who according to his own self-description is a “Swiss entrepreneur active in the fields of...

“Every change in the money relation alters … the conditions of the individual members of society. Some become richer, some poorer.” – Mises, Human Action, p. 414. New money enters the economy at a particular point. It does not enter in the form of a proportional and simultaneous increase in everybody’s incomes. This means that there are uneven effects of monetary expansion, including exacerbated income and wealth inequality. When we trace the consequences of...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.22% to 1.0951 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, May 18(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: In Asia, equities markets rallied strongly, led by the more than 5% gain in Taiwan, the most in over a year as Monday’s 3% drop was more than overcome. The Nikkei gained more than 2% despite the deeper than expected contraction in Q1 GDP. Hong Kong, South Korea, and India also rose...

“The strong economic recovery will not get interrupted by inflation or a credit crunch, and the market will soon reach 4,500.” – Ed Yardeni via Advisor Perspectives After discussing BofA’s view of why the market could drop to 3800,  I thought it fair to discuss a more optimistic view. BofA’s view of a market correction was a function of the more exuberant “optimism” in the market. To wit: “This analysis is interesting, particularly when analysts are rushing to...

Initially, in Switzerland, only those who have been vaccinated will get a Covid certificate. Those who have received a negative test result or have been infected and recovered will have to wait, according to a report in the TagesAnzeiger. This information was later confirmed by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), according to RTS. © Chaiyan Anuwatmongkonchai | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge For those who have been vaccinated, Covid certificates will be...

After three months in a row of hitting new all-time highs, money supply growth slowed in March, dropping to a 10-month low.  This slowdown, however,  does not suggest any significant departure from the past year’s high growth in money supply—which came in the wake of unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages. During March 2021, year-over-year (YOY) growth in the money supply was at 34.1 percent. That’s...

We need to change the incentives of the entire system, not just healthcare, but if we don’t start with healthcare, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself. American Healthcare is a growth industry in the same way cancer is a growth industry: both keep growing until they kill the host, which in the case of healthcare is the U.S. economy. While a great many individuals in the system care about improving the health of their patients,...

To foreigners, Switzerland often means Alpine mountains, cows, chocolates – and tax evasion. As Frédéric Maire, director of the Swiss national film archives, explains in this video, the Hollywood movie machine is helping to keep these clichés alive. He examines whether the sleazy characters depicted in films such as Wolf of Wall Street are simply exaggerations of the real bankers working in Geneva. We ask him whether the rigid, stiff, secretive, protestant,...