SNB & CHF

World Class Entertainer in the Cross-Hairs Christmas is no time to be given the old heave-ho.  This is a time of celebration, redemption, and excess libation.  A time to shop ‘til you drop; the economy depends on it. Don’t get us wrong.  There really is no best time to receive the dreaded pink slip.  But Christmas is the absolute worst.  Has this ever happened to you? Well, believe it or not, this is precisely what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat...

Eric Nelson, a Professor Government at Harvard, has published this year a brilliant and imaginative book, The Theology of Liberalism (Harvard University Press, 2019). Nelson, it should be said, is no leftist, despite what you might expect from his Harvard affiliation. To the contrary, he is a conservative and favors, though not to the fullest extent, the free market and private property rights. I hope to address on future occasions his penetrating and original views...

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The capital markets will turn increasingly quiet in the week ahead as the Christmas holiday thins participation. If this is the season of goodwill, investors are lapping it up. Global equity markets are finishing a strong year on a high note.  Record highs were recorded in the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Stoxx 600. The MSCI Emerging Markets equity index is at its best level since August 2018. Risk assets are doing well, while interest rates have backed up. The CRB...

USD/CHF stays above 10-DMA for the first time in three weeks. 50% Fibonacci retracement can guard immediate upside ahead of 0.9885/90 resistance confluence. A downside break below 61.8% Fibonacci retracement can recall monthly low. Following its break of 10-Day Simple Moving Average (DMA) on Friday, USD/CHF trades around 0.9830 during early Monday. The pair remains positive above 61.8% Fibonacci retracement of August-October upside. In doing so, 50% Fibonacci...

It looks like the year-end repocalypse that was predicted by Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar is taking a raincheck. Today’s Term Repo saw $26.25BN in security submissions ($15.75BN in TSYs, $10.5BN in MBS), below the $35BN in total availability. This was the first “turn” repo that was not fully subscribed (on Monday, there was $54.25BN in demand for $50BN in repos maturing on Jan 17). As such, for the second day in a row, the Fed’s term repo operation was...

EM FX was mostly firmer last week.  ZAR, PEN, and CLP outperformed while TRY, HUF, and CNY underperformed.  MSCI EM traded at new highs for the cycle but ran out of steam near the 1110 area, while MSCI EM FX lagged a bit and has yet to surpass its July high.  Overall, the backdrop for EM remains constructive but investors must be prepared to differentiate amongst credits in 2020. AMERICAS Mexico reports mid-December CPI Monday, which is expected to rise 2.71% y/y vs....

Sweden’s central bank on Thursday raised its policy rate back to zero, bringing an end to its experiment with negative interest rates. Photo: Mikael Sjoberg/Bloomberg News - Click to enlarge Federal Reserve policy makers opposed to taking interest rates negative in the next recession might take comfort from the end of Sweden’s dalliance with below-zero rates. But investors shouldn’t expect the neighboring eurozone to follow suit: Just hours after the Riksbank...

© Julija Sapic | Dreamstime.com Recently published data shows how prices compare across Europe. The data, collected by Eurostat, compares prices across a number of categories of spending in 2018. Average prices across the EU-28 are used as a base. Overall, residents of Switzerland spent 59% more on the same items than an average resident of the EU-28. Switzerland was 57% more expensive than Italy, 54% more expensive than Germany, 49% more expensive than France, 41%...

The country’s current fleet of F-5 Tigers and F/A-18s is ageing. (Keystone / Peter Klaunzer) The Swiss parliament has approved the purchase of a new fleet of fighter jets to the tune of some CHF6 billion ($6.1 billion). The plans may yet face approval by citizens. Both chambers of parliament have now accepted plans proposed by the government to buy up to 30 new fighter jets, a step it says is vital for the stability and security of the country. As the current fleet...