SNB & CHF

As the markets were re-opening in Asia earlier today, I joined Martin Soong and Sir Jegarajah on CNBC Asia. I had returned from a business trip and visited our summer house on the Jersey shore for what I thought was going to be a weekend more than a month ago. Oil prices had initially reacted positively to the OPEC+ agreement. Still, I was skeptical as the cuts seemed inadequate to meet the dramatic compression in demand, let along the notorious non-compliance by...

USD/CHF extends gradual declines from the monthly top marked the last-Monday. A descending trend line support, 61.8% Fibonacci retracement may offer intermediate rests during the downside. 0.9745/50 can act as a buffer resistance beyond 100-HMA. USD/CHF remains under pressure while taking rounds to 0.9655, down 0.05% on a daily, amid the early trading session on Monday. The pair currently tests 50% Fibonacci retracement of its upside from March 27 to April 06....

The GBP to CHF interbank exchange rate today has been ranging between 1.2017 and 1.2092. The pound looks supportive today on the back that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is on the road to recovery from Covid-19. Swiss Economy Expected to Shrink Possible 10% Switzerland has had over 23,000 cases of the Coronavirus that has had a negative impact on their economy with current expectations that their economy could shrink as much at 10%. Many industries in Switzerland...

© Sorin Colac | Dreamstime.com On 8 April 2020, Switzerland’s government decided to extend the country’s lockdown measures for a further week. In a press release the Federal Council said the measures would be extended for another week and then possibly progressively loosened before the end of April. The measures have proved to be effective with the spread of the virus clearly reducing over recent days, said the statement. However, given the evolution of the spread...

In 207 the low-lying areas of Bolivia’s amazon were flooded after heavy rains ravaged the country.  (Keystone/Martin Alipaz) People began growing manioc and squash much earlier than previously thought, a team of researchers led by the Swiss university of Bern has found. A study shows that the earliest human inhabitants of Moxos plains began transforming the tropical savanna eco-region in Bolivia 10,000 years ago, that is 8,000 earlier than previously thought. They...

The fictitious valuation of the stock market will eventually re-connect with reality in a violent decline. No, buy the tumor, sell the news ™ is not a typo: the stock market is a lethal tumor in our economy and society. Buy the rumor, sell the news encapsulates the old traders’ wisdom that markets rise on the sizzle of hope, promises, projections, Federal Reserve pimping (see below), tax cuts, etc. etc. etc., not on the actual steak of sales and profits. Buy the...

Introduction In 1997 Ralph Raico published an article titled “Keynes and the Reds.” Raico’s article highlighted John Maynard Keynes’s review of a 1936 book by the British socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb called Soviet Communism. In his review, Keynes discusses Joseph Stalin’s USSR and concludes: “The result is impressive.” For Raico, a historian in the classical liberal tradition, this statement contradicts the conventional idea that Keynes was a model liberal....

In times of crisis, governments have a tendency to overcompensate for risk. This tendency may be in the public’s best interest, but it could also serve broader governmental interests. The public and government’s interest are not always one and the same. After the September 11 attacks, a bipartisan Congress enacted the disastrous USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) in an...

While expecting long-term yields to be capped, we remain neutral on US Treasuries. We think peripheral euro area bonds to avoid the levels of stress seen during the sovereign debt crisis. On 23 March, the Fed announced unlimited quantitative easing (QE), or “QE infinity”. Ramping up its purchases of Treasuries to a daily pace of USD75 bn, it currently owns 18% of all US Treasuries outstanding, but could easily own between 40%-50% by the end of the year. We remain...

Two days ago, when a platoon of clueless CNBC hacks said that stocks were extremely undervalued, and must be bought (on their fundamentals, not because the Fed was about to nationalize the entire bond market and is set to start buying equity ETFs in the next crash), we showed just how “undervalued” the market was. That’s when Credit Suisse chief equity strategist Jonathan Golub – usually one of the most bullish Wall Streeters – published a chart showing that any...