SNB & CHF

According to Eurostat’s preliminary figures, euro area GDP grew by 0.2% quarter on quarter in Q3, the same pace as in Q2 and in line with our expectations. Country wise, France, Italy and Spain grew at the same pace in Q3 as in Q2. In particular, household and investment spending grew at a solid pace in both France and Spain. The preliminary GDP figure for Germany will not be released until 14 November. But based on the country data released so far and assuming...

There have been plenty of developments warning of a global economic slowdown. Yet, seemingly to justify the continued advance in equity prices, there has begun to be talk of possible cyclical and global rebound. That is the new constellation, connecting the better than expected Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese September industrial output figures,  a slightly stronger than expected Q3  GDP reports from the US and the eurozone.  Ahead of the weekend, China reported...

EM should continue to benefit from the generalized improvement in the global backdrop. Trade tensions have eased whilst the risks of a hard Brexit have fallen, at least for now. Yet recent developments in some major EM countries underscores how important it is for investors to differentiate between the strong credits and the weak ones. For instance, South Africa, Hong Kong, Argentina, and Chile all come with idiosyncratic risks.  AMERICAS Chile reports September GDP...

Area Index Price orPerformance index Type Funds ISIN Methode Ausschüttungsart Spread Okt 19 KGV KBV  Titelzahl Fonds Tielzahl Benchmark Vola 5J Agio TER Disagio Bemerkung Small Caps MSCI EM SM GDTR Smart Beta: Small SPDR MSCI Emerging Markets Small Cap UCITS ETF IE00B48X4842 Optimized Sampling Thesaurierend 0,50% 12,33 1,24 1472 17,1% 0% 0,55% 0% China 11% Europa MSCI Europe Small Cap Value Weighted Index...

© Tero Vesalainen Dreamstime.com Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) recently announced it had reduced the price Swiss healthcare providers and patients will pay for 257 drugs by 16.3%. These lower prices, which take affect on 1 December 2019, are expected to save CHF 100 million annually. The FOPH looked at the prices of 478 drugs and achieved price reductions on 257 (54%) of them. The government has promised to cut healthcare costs via a range of...

© Andrey Metelev | Dreamstime.com The Federal Council, Switzerland’s executive, has confirmed a decision made by parliament to raise the minimum speed of broadband internet connections in Switzerland. From 1 January 2020, the minimum download speed specified in Switzerland’s universal service agreement with Swisscom will rise from 3 to 10 megabits per second (Mbits/s) and the minimum upload speed will rise from 0.3 to 1 Mbit/s. The change aims to boost social and...

China was the world economy’s best hope in 2017. Like it was the only realistic chance to push out of the post-2008 doldrums, a malaise that has grown increasingly spasmatic and dangerous the longer it goes on. Communist authorities, some of them, anyway, reacted to Euro$ #3’s fallout early on in 2016 by dusting off their Keynes. A stimulus panic that turned out to be more panic than stimulus. China GDP, 2007-2019(see more posts on China Gross Domestic Product, )...

Sign of the times: a Swisscom box in Lausanne in 2017. It had been converted into a book exchange The last telephone box in French-speaking Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva, was dismantled on Thursday. Swisscom will remove the one in the country – in Baden, northern Switzerland – on November 28. An era in the history of Swiss telecommunications is thus coming to an end, an era that witnessed millions of declarations of love, tears and banal conversations in...

What typically distinguishes recessions from downturns is the inventory cycle. Even in 2008, that was the basis for the Great “Recession.” It was distinguished most prominently by the financial conditions and global-reaching panic, true, but the effects of the monetary crash registered heaviest in the various parts of that inventory process. An economy for whatever reasons slows down. That leads to inventory piling up across the various levels of the supply chain....

Both Brazil and Mexico are in a good position to benefit from the current improvement in market sentiment. However, when comparing the factors driving the currencies of both countries, we think there are relatively more near-term positives for the Mexican peso than for the Brazilian real. These include: (1) the peso will maintain its carry advantage for some time; (2) hedging-related flows should be mixed for the real, but could net as a drag; (3) Mexico’s near-term...