Tag Archives: Featured

This week, the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force published a guide on responding to coronavirus denial. During second wave, trust in the decisions of the Swiss authorities dropped below where it was in spring, and the social consensus on how to respond to the pandemic eroded over the summer, said the authors. Conspiracy theories and misinformation have contributed to this trend and reduced the adoption of measures to control the spread of the virus, said the...

Novartis launched a new strategy in sub-Saharan Africa in 2019. Sales people will no longer be incentivised by sales targets but rather by patients reached. Reuters / Baz Ratner Novartis has said it wants everyone in the world to be able to access its products, even multi-million-dollar gene therapies. Can its experiment work? Five years ago, Swiss pharma firm Novartis did something no one else in the industry had ever done. It set out to rigorously evaluate whether...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.01% to 1.0817 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 4(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The euro has been sold through $1.20 for the first time since December 1 and has now given back roughly half of the gains scored from the US election (~$1.16) to the early January high (~$.1.2350). More broadly, the greenback is bid against most of the major currencies, with the...

Your marginal tax rate is an important metric. But it is also a complex and misunderstood concept. Many beliefs about the marginal tax rates are wrong. So, in this article, I want to clear out as much as possible regarding the subject. By the end, you will know how to estimate your marginal tax rate and what it means. Marginal Tax Rate Let’s start at the beginning: what is a marginal tax rate? Your marginal tax rate is the rate at which new income is taxed. It is...

The recent GameStop short-squeeze drama has riveted financial markets. Given the historic unpopularity of short sellers (e.g., Holman Jenkins has written that “short-selling is…widely unpopular with everyone who has a stake in seeing stock prices go up”), the resulting heightened invective against them is not a surprise. Unfortunately, an intensification of this rhetoric could lead to unwarranted broader restrictions on short selling, indicated by the politicians...

The price of silver is going up and down like a yo-yo. On Sunday and into the first part of Monday, the price skyrocketed on news that Reddit was touting the metal. But as the data clearly showed, the price was not driven up by retail buying of physical metal. To be sure, there was retail buying. But even if they depleted the finite inventories of Eagles and Maples, they were not the buyers that pushed the price up to $30. That would be the futures speculators....

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.05% to 1.0809 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 3(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Equities have charged higher, and the greenback is mostly firmer. News that Draghi may become Italy’s next Prime Minister has boosted Italian bonds. The PBOC unexpectedly drained liquidity, and this may have deterred buying of Chinese stocks, a notable exception in the regional rally....

Sometimes you can count on the manipulation conspiracy theorists to get it exactly wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, nor halfway wrong. Not even mostly wrong. Totally wrong, backwards. Michael Crichton, in talking about the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect said this: “You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s [Gell-Mann] case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.15% to 1.082 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 1(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Global equities are snapping back today, while the greenback retained the strength seen last week that was attributed to safe-haven flows. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index snapped a four-day decline led by Hong Kong, South Korea, India, and Indonesia. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx is up around...

British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, at a farm in Wales in 2019, where he was canvassing support for his post-Brexit farming policy. Afp Or Licensors Britain argues that Brexit will make British agriculture greener. SWI Swissinfo.ch looks at how successful EU agricultural policies have been, and how they compare with Switzerland’s approach. One of the arguments Brexiters pushed forward was that the United Kingdom would be greener after Brexit. They argued hefty...