Tag Archives: Featured

A good year for Swiss hotels, 2017 is when the Bürgenstock Resort (pictured) opened above Lake Lucerne. (© KEYSTONE / EQ IMAGES / Melanie Duchene) - Click to enlarge After several difficult years, the Swiss hotel industry is recovering. There were 37.4 million overnight stays in 2017 – 5.2% more than in the previous year and nearly as many as the record years of 1990 and 2008. The increase came from locals...

Whipsawed Frank Roellinger has updated us with respect to the signals given by his Modified Ned Davis Method (MDM) in the course of the recent market correction. The MDM is a purely technical trading system designed for position-trading the Russell 2000 index, both long and short (for details and additional color see The Modified Davis Method and Reader Question on the Modified Ned Davis Method). The Nasdaq pillar…...

There are three distinct classes of drivers in the week ahead. The first is high frequency data. The most important of the economic reports include the preliminary estimate of the February inflation in the euro area, the US January income, and consumption data alongside the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the core PCE deflator, and Japanese retail sales and industrial production figures. The second group of drivers...

Stock Markets EM FX ended Friday on a mixed note and capped off a soft week overall. Best performers last week were ZAR, CLP, and PHP while the worst were TRY, ARS, and IDR. Fed Chief Powell’s testimony to Congress will likely draw market attention back to Fed policy. Stock Markets Emerging Markets, February 21 Source: economist.com - Click to enlarge Singapore Singapore reports January IP and is expected to...

The Federal Council believes that the change would not increase the risk of crime. (Keystone) - Click to enlarge The deadline of 20 years to exchange recalled banknotes should be abolished, the Federal Council suggested on Wednesday. The current system, which was introduced in 1921, operates under the assumption that discontinued notes which are not returned to the bank within the exchange deadline have...

Switzerland’s transport authority (OFT) recently gave Domo Swiss Express SA, a Zurich-based bus company, a green light to run three routes across Switzerland. Domo bus_source_Facebook_Domo.Reisen - Click to enlarge The first will run from Zurich to Lugano, via Basel and Luzern, the second from St. Gallen to Geneva airport, via Zurich and Bienne, and the third from Chur to Sion, via Zurich and Bern. Services are...

If a currency can’t be converted on demand into the underlying commodity, it’s not “backed by oil,” it’s just another form of control fraud. The broke and broken country of Venezuela appears to be the first nation-state to issue a cryptocurrency token (the petro) as a means of escaping the financial black hole that’s consuming its economy: Maduro Launches Oil-Backed Crypto “For The Welfare Of Venezuela”. For context,...

Peculiar Behavior As I have shown in previous issues of Seasonal Insights, various financial instruments are demonstrating peculiar behavior in the course of the week: the S&P 500 Index is typically strong on Tuesdays, Gold on Fridays and Bitcoin on Tuesdays (similar to the S&P 500 Index). Several readers have inquired whether currencies exhibit such patterns as well. Are these extremely large markets also home...

The start of the year has seen the Japanese yen and Swiss franc appreciate strongly against the US dollar (they rose by 5.6% and 4.4% respectively between 1 January and 22 February) despite higher US yields. However, this rise in US yields came with heightened market volatility, favouring safe haven currencies such as the yen and franc. Indeed, both currencies are characterised by structurally large domestic current...

Pallets in the warehouse of the logistics center of one of Switzerland's main online shops (Keystone) - Click to enlarge Swiss consumers are increasingly turning to the internet for shopping. Online sales were up by 10% in 2017, with a 23% increase in online purchases from abroad. The total sales generated from online shopping in 2017 was CHF8.6 billion ($9.2 billion) last year, with CHF1.6 billion going to...