Tag Archives: Featured

Some 92% when people in Switzerland are on the internet and nearly everyone under 55 is an internet user. (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) The Swiss are using the internet more than ever but have growing angst about companies like Facebook violating their privacy. The consequence is a rising trend to self-censorship: not looking for certain information or not expressing oneself online. The average time the Swiss spend on the internet has doubled since 2011 to 25 hours a...

While the music industry has embraced technology, the luxury sector remains very conservative. (© Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi) Swiss luxury startups are finding it difficult to break into an established market that can be averse to change due to longstanding traditions. “When I was working for an auction house a couple of years ago the chairman handed me a gadget a client had given him. It was a USB stick and he did not know what it was.” This anecdote was shared...

Flash PMI’s from IHS Markit for the US economy were split in October. According to the various sentiment indicators, there’s a little bit of a rebound on the manufacturing side as contrary to the ISM’s estimates for the same sector. Markit reports a sharp uptick in current manufacturing business volumes during this month. The manufacturing index came in at 51.5, up from a revised reading of 51.1 in September based almost entirely on the production subset. But at the...

◆ The End Of Fiat In One Chart? ◆ For the first time in 21 years, Germany has openly bought gold into its reserve holdings ◆ With ECB mutiny and Deutsche Bank’s rapid demise, fears are rising of a looming financial crisis, and with that, Germany has shown a renewed interest in gold German Gold Holdings MoM, 1999-2019 - Click to enlarge ◆ Which came after Germany’s stunning announcement in January 2013 that the Bundesbank would repatriate 674 tons of gold from the...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.08% to 1.1014 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 24(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: As the UK awaits the EU’s decision on its request, disappointing flash PMI readings Japan, Australia, and Germany have filled the news vacuum. Sweden’s Riksbank retained a hawkish tone while keeping rates on hold, and Norway’s Norges Bank also stood pat. The market expects Turkey to...

The Winkelvoss twins are among the biggest cryptocurrency investors in the world. Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, who made a fortune out of bitcoin, are to deliver a keynote speech at next year’s Crypto Finance Conference in St Moritz. The annual gathering of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and investors has become a fixture event, running just before the World Economic Forum’s flagship Davos summit. The twin brothers famously fell out with Mark Zuckerberg, suing the...

Environmental activists have previously called attention to the excessive use of single-use plastics by large corporations such as Nestlé, which in April 2019 received a giant monster made of plastic waste from Greenpeace at its Vevey headquarters. The Swiss food giant has been placed second behind Coca-Cola in an audit of plastic waste by a coalition of environmental organisations. The results of the analysis, released on Wednesday by the Break Free From...

The IMF projects that China will expand by less than 6% in 2020, but unless China provides more stimulus, it may be difficult to achieve. This is not only my view but also the view of Helen Qiao, the chief economist for Greater China at Bank of America. I was on the Bloomberg set with Alix Steele and Ms. Qiao earlier today. The PBOC passed on an opportunity to cut rates this week when it set the new Loan Prime Rate.  Qiao says there is still a window for fresh action...

While things go wrong for Jay Powell in repo, they are going right in housing. Sort of. It’s more than cliché that the real estate sector is interest rate sensitive. It surely is, and much of the Fed’s monetary policy figuratively banks on it. When policymakers talk about interest rate stimulus, they largely mean the mortgage space. Homebuilders, at least, responded in August 2019 to the first rate cut in a decade exactly the way the FOMC had imagined when...

Even if we don’t measure the erosion of intangible capital, the social and political consequences of this impoverishment are manifesting in all sorts of ways. The central thesis of my new book Will You Be Richer or Poorer? is the financial “wealth” we’ve supposedly gained (or at least a few of us have gained) in the past 20 years has masked the unraveling of our intangible capital: the resilience of our economy, our social capital, i.e. our ability to find common...