SNB & CHF

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...

While sentiment has been at best mixed about the direction of the US economy the past few months, the European economy cannot even manage that much. Its most vocal proponent couldn’t come up with much good to say about it – while he was on his way out the door. At his final press conference as ECB President on October 24, Mario Draghi had to acknowledge (sort of) how he is leaving quite the mess for Christine Lagarde. Incoming data since the meeting in September...

In my days before I worked for the Mises Institute, I had a colleague who knew I associated with Austrian-School economists. In the wake of the bailouts and quantitative easing that followed the 2008 financial crisis, he’d sometimes crack “where’s all that inflation you Austrians keep talking about?” But then, in the very same conversation, he’d remark with dismay on how much housing-price increases had outpaced household income in the region. He didn’t need an...

The risks of a hard Brexit are perhaps higher than markets appreciated. Here, we set forth some possible scenarios as to what may unfold after the January 31 deadline. Uncertainty is likely to be protracted and markets hate uncertainty. As such, we see UK assets continuing to underperform. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS Fears of a hard Brexit are still alive and well.  Prime Minister Johnson is pushing to guarantee a Brexit by end-2020 even if a new trade arrangement is not in...

By Daniel R. Amerman, CFA As can be seen in the graph above, for the last 12 weeks there has been a stunning visual correlation between the yellow bars of the total weekly funding of deficits by the Federal Reserve, and the green bars of the weekly deficit spending by the United States government. Total deficit spending, the extent to which monies spent by the federal government exceeded taxes collected, was a staggering $422 billion in just the last 12 weeks. In...

Keith Weiner, CEO & Founder of Monetary Metals, talks about our unsustainable economy and how both political parties are diagnosing and prescribing unworkable remedies.

Keith Weiner, CEO & Founder of Monetary Metals, talks about our unsustainable economy and how both political parties are diagnosing and prescribing unworkable remedies.

Dear Mr. Taft: I eagerly read your piece Warriors for Opportunity on Wednesday, as I often do about pieces that argue that capitalism is not working today. You begin by saying: “Financial capitalism – free markets powered by a robust financial system – is the dominant economic model in the world today. Yet many who have benefited from the system agree it’s not working the way it ought to.” Leaving aside that our financial system is not robust—the interest rate is...