Tag Archives: Featured

Summary: US official comments on the FX market appear to have increased in frequency. They are mostly warnings about a strong dollar, but not all comments are dollar-negative. Policy is the ultimate driver but comments pose headline risk. Although in office less than a fortnight,  the new US Administration is showing a disregard not only for the domestic convention but international agreements like on...

By Ingrid Melander, Leigh Thomas and Simon Carraud Marine Le Pen © Reuters. France's FN sets out unorthodox economic plans to support a euro exit - Click to enlarge PARIS (Reuters) – France’s National Front will combine the euro exit at the heart of its economic platform with a cocktail of unorthodox policies including money printing, currency intervention and import taxes, a top party official told Reuters. A key...

Swiss Franc EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc, January 31(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ) - Click to enlarge FX Rates The immigration imbroglio in the United States is being cited in various accounts for the price action, including yesterday’s drop in the S&P 500, where the intraday loss was the largest since before the election.  The drama is also being blamed for the dollar’s losses yesterday, which it is...

The ECB’s nationalization of the European corporate bond sector continues. In the ECB’s latest update, the six central banks acting on behalf of the Euro system provided an update on the list of corporate bonds they bought. They bought into 810 issuances with a total of €573bn in amount outstanding. For the week ending 27th January, the bond purchases stood at €1.9bn across sectors. This increases the number of...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Silver Gets Frisky Last week, the prices of the metals had been up Sunday night but were slowly sliding all week — until Friday at 7:00am Arizona time (14:00 in London). Then the price of silver took off like a silver-speculator-fueled-rocket. It went from $16.68 to $17.25, or 3.4% in two hours. What does it mean? We...

Imagine if you asked a grocery clerk to break a $20 bill, and he charged you $1.40 in tax. Silly, right? After all, you were only exchanging one form of money for another. But try walking to a local precious metals dealer in more than 25 states and exchanging a $20 bill for an ounce of silver. If you do that kind of money exchange, you will get hammered with a sales tax. That’s the price you can pay for bucking the...

  Swiss Franc The EUR/CHF collapsed once again to 1.0650. This rate broke the 1.0680 – 1.0700 that constituted the previous intervention area. Reasons can be found in the weak U.S. GDP weak, in Trump’s foreign trade policy and in the strong Swiss trade balance. Who has understand the principles of the balance of payments, knows that private investors and the SNB must export the equivalent of the current account...

The KOF Economic Barometer dropped slightly in January 2017. Compared to its December 2016 value it is now standing at 101.7 points. The standing at a level slightly above the long-term average indicates stable perspectives for the Swiss economy in the near future. In January 2017, the Economic Barometer reached a score of 101.7 points. This relates to a slight downward revision by 0.4 points compared to its...

2017 could be the year that the euro collapses according to Joseph Stiglitz writing in Fortune magazine and these concerns were echoed over the weekend by former Bundesbank vice-president and senior European Central Bank official, Jürgen Stark, when he said that the ‘destruction’ of the Eurozone may be necessary if countries are to thrive again. Stark and Stiglitz are too of many respected commentators, from both the so...

Rekindling the Dollar Debasement Strategy The U.S. dollar, as measured by the dollar index, has generally gone up since mid-2014. The dollar index goes up when the U.S. dollar gains strength (value) against a basket of currencies, including the euro, yen, pound, and several others. Conversely, the dollar index goes down when the U.S. dollar loses value. Between July 30, 2014 and December 28, 2016, the dollar’s value,...