Tag Archives: Featured

Beginning of Post: See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Fundamental Developments In this New Year’s holiday shortened week, the price of gold moved up again, another $16 and silver another 29 cents. Or we should rather say the dollar moved down 0.03mg gold and 0.03 grams silver. It will make those who borrow to short the dollar happy… Let’s take a look at...

The German group Zalando is now the number one e-commerce company in Switzerland (Keystone) Switzerland’s retail sector failed to profit from a weaker franc and improving economy last year and business remains sluggish, according to a Credit Suisse report. Retail sales increased by 0.1% in 2017 after two years’ decline, Credit Suisse noted in its annual industry surveyexternal link published on Tuesday. Retailers were...

Unemployment Rate (not seasonally adjusted) Registered unemployment in December 2017 – According to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) surveys, 146,654 unemployed people were enrolled at the Regional Employment Centers (RAV) at the end of December 2017, 9,337 more than in the previous month. The unemployment rate rose from 3.1% in November 2017 to 3.3% in the month under review. Compared to the same...

The Used Goods Question Retail sales in several countries like Germany, Japan and Switzerland continue to fall or they remain steady for years. In the United States they have strongly risen recently. We should remind readers, that used goods sold via Ebay or similar, are not contained in this statistics. Still they create economic value for the purchases. By mentality, Swiss, Germans or Japanese pay more attention so...

Avant-propos: Le texte de la conférence de M Jordan de  2011 semble ne plus être disponible sur le net. Du coup, nous le publions ici malgré le Copyright. Ce genre de documents doit être connu du grand public, puisqu’il est le garant de cette institution privée (société anonyme cotée en bourse, soumise à une loi fédérale. L’actionnariat est réparti ainsi: https://www.snb.ch/fr/iabout/snb/org/id/snb_org_stock ), qu’est...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.04% to 1.1753 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, January 08(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates The US dollar is enjoying modest but broad-based gains after trading firmly at the end of last week despite the slightly disappointing jobs report. The dollar’s upticks are understood to be corrective in nature. The Canadian dollar appears...

The consumer price index (CPI) remained unchanged in December 2017 compared with the previous month, reaching 100.8 points (December 2015=100). Inflation was 0.8% compared with the same month of the previous year. Average annual inflation reached 0.5% in 2017. These are the results of the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). Switzerland Consumer Price Index (CPI) YoY, Dec 2017(see more posts on Switzerland Consumer Price...

The investment climate is being shaped by two powerful forces. First is the very accommodative policy stance. This includes the United States, where despite delivering the fifth rate hike in the cycle, adjusted by headline CPI, remains negative. The balance sheet has begun being reduced, financial conditions in the US are easier now than a year ago. The ECB’s bond purchase program, which has been cut in half to 30 bln...

Stock Markets EM FX was mostly firmer last week, but ended on a mixed note Friday.  Best performers on the week for COP, MXN, and BRL while the worst were ARS, PHP, and CNY.  We continue to warn investors against blindly buying into this broad-based EM rally, as we believe divergences will once again assert themselves in the coming weeks. Stock Markets Emerging Markets, January 03 Source: economist.com - Click...

- Click to enlarge Germany does not have a government, though the election was more than three months ago.  Spain, Portugal, and Ireland have minority governments.  Austria is the first government since the financial crisis to include the populist right.  The EU is trying to press the Visegrad group of central European countries to conform to the values of Western European members.  And yet it is Italian politics...