Tag Archives: Featured

Headlines Week January 23, 2017 Who has read Milton Friedman knows that the Trump reflation trade is now showing its positive side. US wages are rising by 2.5%, while inflation is still relatively low. According to Friedman, inflation will increase only later. This implies that speculators are long the dollar and short the Swiss franc and the euro during the weak inflation period. The last ECB meeting showed that the...

Swiss Franc Speculators were net short CHF in January 2015, shortly before the end of the peg, with 26.4K contracts. Then again in December 2015, when they expected a Fed rate hike, with 25.5K contracts. The biggest short CHF, however, happened in June 2007, when speculators were net short 80K contracts. Shortly after, the U.S. subprime crisis started. The carry trade against CHF collapsed. The...

Headlines Week January 23, 2017 Who has read Milton Friedman knows that the Trump reflation trade is now showing its positive side. US wages are rising by 2.5%, while inflation is still relatively low. According to Friedman, inflation will increase only later. This implies that speculators are long the dollar and short the Swiss franc and the euro during the weak inflation period. The last ECB meeting showed that the...

Stock Markets EM FX ended last week on a firm not, led by a huge MXN rally on Inauguration Day. We believe that the peso rally was largely driven by positioning and technicals, and so we view Friday’s gains as a correction since the fundamental outlook remains unchanged. Indeed, we think the broader EM rally will be short-lived too, as US interest rates remain elevated. The 10-year yield flirted with the 2.5% level,...

Summary: Investors will finally be able to focus on what the new US President does rather than what he says. The UK Supreme Court decision is expected, but it may not be the driver than it may have previously seemed likely. The dollar-yen rate does not appear to be driven by domestic variable as much as US yields and equities. Prices not real sector data may be the key for the euro. United States The US...

This week the bank Credit Suisse published its cantonal cost of living report. Its ranking considers a typical household’s biggest expenses: tax, housing, commuting, basic health insurance and childcare. It takes income and deducts all of these costs to arrive at a measure of disposable income. In a simplified world it might be expected that low tax rates would push up the cost of most other things as the wealthy...

In Romania, 96.1% of the population owns the home they live in. In Switzerland the percentage is 37.4%. © Dirima | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge Home ownership rates vary significantly across the country. The lowest rates are found in the canton of Basel-City (16.0%) and Geneva (18.3%). Relative to these two cities, home ownership abounds in Valais (57.2%), the highest. Vaud (31.4%), Zurich (28.5%), Bern (39.9%),...

  Swiss Franc Currency Index During the last month the Swiss Franc index recovered some of the losses since the election of Donald Trump. Its performance is +2%, while the dollar index is 2% down. Trade-weighted index Swiss Franc, January 21(see more posts on Swiss Franc Index, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge   Swiss Franc Currency Index (3 years) The Swiss Franc index is the trade-weighted...

For the third time in four weeks, the market was closed on Monday due to a holiday. Not only is this week shortened by a holiday,  it is also coinciding with the annual Billionaire’s convention in Davos, Switzerland and the Presidential inauguration on Friday. Increased volatility over the next couple of days will certainly not be surprising. In this past weekend’s missive, I discussed a variety of “extremes” being...

It cannot be merely coincidental that the incomes and wealth of the top 5% have pulled away from the stagnating 95% in the 25 years dominated by neocon-neoliberalism. One unexamined narrative I keep hearing is: “OK, so neocon-neoliberalism was less than ideal, but Trump could be much worse.” Let’s start by asking: would Syrian civilians agree with this assessment? The basic idea in the “OK, so neocon-neoliberalism was...