Tag Archives: Featured

Arguably one of the easier calls for us to make after 37 years in power was that President dos Santos would find ways of affording himself another 5 years in. Like any ‘effective’ leader, Mr. Santos made sure the final deal to do just that was stitched up long before the Party Congress formally convenes in Luanda, with a lower level MPLA ‘Central Committee’ already rubber stamping his name in mid-August. That also...

Swiss Franc Currency Index The Swiss Franc index gained nearly 3% last week, while the dollar index lost over 2%. This gives a total gain of 5%. Swiss Franc Index (see more posts on Swiss Franc Index) Click to enlarge. Swiss Franc Currency Index (3 years) The Swiss Franc index is the trade-weighted currency performance (see the currency basket) On a three years interval, the Swiss Franc had a weak performance....

Summer doldrums continue to depress speculative activity in the currency futures market.  In the CFTC Commitment of Traders reporting week ending August 16 speculators made small adjustments to gross currency positions.  There was only one change more than 6k contracts. The Aussie bulls added 9.4k contracts to their gross long position, lifting it to 68.9k contracts. Of the other 15 gross positions we track, there...

Swiss Franc: In the real effective exchange rate calculation, the PPI plays an important role. The Swiss producer price index fell by 0.8% YoY, while the German one is down 2.0%. Thismeans that in 2016 the CHF overvaluation is rising, when compared to the major Swiss trading partner Germany. The values for 2015 were -6% for the Swiss and -2.5% for Germany, the CHF overvaluation was reduced. Click to enlarge. Source...

Last weekend, when we reported that Germany’s Raiffeisenbank Gmund am Tegernsee – a community bank in southern Germany – said it would start charging retail clients a fee of 0.4% on deposits of more than €100,000 we said that “now that a German banks has finally breached the retail depositor NIRP barrier, expect many more banks to follow.” Not even a week later, not one but two large banks have done just that....

There are many precious metals refineries throughout the world, some local to their domestic markets, and some international, even global in scale. Many but by no means all of these refineries are on the Good Delivery Lists of gold and/or silver. These lists are maintained by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and they identify accredited refineries of large (wholesale) gold and silver bars that continue to...

China unveiled a second equity link that will allow foreign investors to buy local stocks with fewer restrictions. Saudi Arabia will allow qualified foreign investors to subscribe to local IPOs starting this January. South Africa’s two main opposition parties agreed to informally band together in local governments. The Brazilian central bank decreased the daily intervention amount to 10,000 reverse swap contracts...

SMI The Swiss Market Index is set to close lower this week underperforming global equities as US stocks reached new record highs and emerging markets outperformed on a weaker dollar. Click to enlarge. Oil also made further gains this week as investors bet that talks between OPEC members and other producers may result in action to stabilise the market in the coming weeks. Click to enlarge. Japan The week began with...

Norway Real House Price Per M2 We have all heard the incredible stories of housing riches in commodity producing hotspots such as Western Australia and Canada. People have become millionaires simply by leveraging up and holding on to properties. These are the beneficiaries of a global money-printing spree that pre-dates the financial crisis by decades. The road toward such outsized gains in property is not paved...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. The Famous Buffett Quote The prices of the metals didn’t change much this week. We thought we would take this opportunity to quote Warren Buffet. A comment he made at Harvard in 1998 earned him the scorn of the gold community. “Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another...