SNB & CHF

Rosenblatt Securities analyst Jun Zhang maintained a sell rating on Apple with a price target of $150 per share, citing a decline in iPhone sales in China is leading to a wave of production cuts by the company. “Based on our recent channel checks, we believe Apple’s total iPhone sales in China were down ~-30% y/y in November,” said Zhang in a note to clients on Tuesday. Zhang stated that consumers are opting for cheaper models than the iPhone 11 Pro, which retails...

The reckoning is coming, and everyone who counted on “eternal growth of borrowing” to stave off the reckoning is in for a big surprise. We’ve used a simple trick to keep the status quo from imploding for the past 11 years: borrow whatever it takes to keep paying the skyrocketing costs for housing, healthcare, college, childcare, government, permanent wars and so on. The trick has worked because central banks pushed interest rates to zero, lowering the costs of...

Plans and Consequences You are probably already getting into the holiday spirit, perhaps you are even under a little stress. But the turn of the year will soon be here – an occasion to review the past year and make plans for the new one. Many people are doing just that – and their behavior is creating the strongest seasonal rally in the precious metals markets. Anonymous industrial stackers showing off their freshly purchased silver hoard. PT Silver is seasonally...

Eventually the younger generations will connect all the economic injustices implicit in ‘OK Boomer’ with the Fed. Much of the cluelessness and economic inequality behind the OK Boomer meme is the result of Federal Reserve policies that have favored those who already own the assets (Boomers) that the Fed has relentlessly pumped higher, to the extreme disadvantage of younger generations who were not given the opportunity to buy assets cheap and ride the Fed wave...

Buy gold and silver to hedge risks in 2020. IG interview Mark O’Byrne of GoldCore With late cycle risks and concerns about global growth, many Wall Street analysts are increasingly bullish on gold. Mark O’Byrne, founder at GoldCore spoke to IGTV’s Victoria Scholar about the outlook for gold in 2020. He explained why most analysts including GoldCore are optimistic on both gold and silver. He also tells IGTV why he thinks palladium is looking overvalued in the near...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.01% to 1.0893 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, December 19(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: It is risky to read too much into the price action in holiday-thin markets, but inflation fears are beginning to surface. The price of January WTI is around $61, having tested $50 a barrel in Q3. The CRB Index made new highs for the year yesterday and is up almost 9% for the year....

We do not like Purchasing Power or Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) as measurement for currencies. For us, the trade balance decides if a currency is overvalued. Only the trade balance can express productivity gains, while the REER assumes constant productivity in comparison to trade partners. Who has read Michael Pettis, knows that a rising trade surplus may also be caused by a higher savings rate while the trade partners decided to spend more. This is partially...

USD/CHF trades near the multi-month low. A Bullish technical formation, oversold RSI conditions stop sellers. The further downside can look towards late-August month low. USD/CHF seesaws around 0.9800 during the pre-European session on Thursday. The pair forms a bullish technical pattern on the four-hour (4H) chart. Also supporting the hopeful buyers is oversold conditions of 14-bar Relative Strength Index (RSI). Even so, a sustained break of the bullish pattern’s...

Rail accidents are rare in Switzerland (© Keystone / Urs Flueeler) There has been a fall in the number of accidents and fatalities on the Swiss railways, according to new national figures. On Tuesday, the Federal Statistical Office reported a total of 70 rail accidents and 14 deaths in 2018. This is the lowest number of annual fatalities since 2011.  In the 2000s there were between 200 and 282 reported accidents each year and 20-40 deaths, excluding suicides on the...

Poverty may not always be visible, but it affects some 100,000 children in Switzerland. (Keystone) Although Switzerland is rich, poverty within the country continues to rise, says a report released on Tuesday. Poverty affected 675,000 people including 100,000 children in 2017, a 10% increase on the previous year, according to the reportexternal link (in French) by the non-governmental organisation Caritasexternal link. In 2014, poverty affected 6.7% of the population...