Tag Archives: Featured

There were no surprises in the US-China Phase One trade deal The dollar is drifting lower ahead of the key retail sales data; there are other minor US data out today Bank of England credit survey showed demand for loans fell in Q4 Turkey cut its one-week repo rate by 75 bps to 11.25%; South Africa is expected to keep rates steady at 6.5% Japan reported November core machine orders and December PPI; China’s credit numbers for December showed no big change in lending...

Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich is one of the most upmarket shopping streets in the world. (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) A building on Zurich’s most exclusive shopping street has been converted into a blockchain-powered investment following its CHF130 million ($134 million) sale. It is the latest attempt to unlock the value of bricks and mortar using digitally-coded tokens. Bahnhofstrasse 52, which houses offices and a Swatch retail outlet, was bought by Zug-based real estate...

The Iranian regime and the Saudi Arabian regime are longtime enemies, with both vying for control of the Persian Gulf region. Part of the conflict stems from religious differences — differences between Shia and Sunni muslim groups. But much of the conflict stems from mundane desires to establish regional dominance. For more than forty years, however, Saudi Arabia has had one important ace in the hole in terms of its battle with Iran: the US’s continued support for...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.04% to 1.0749 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, January 16(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The global capital markets are calm today as investors await fresh trading incentives. New record highs in the US equity indices gave Asia Pacific stocks a lift, though China and Taiwan were notable exceptions. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is firm new record highs set last week. US...

EUR/CHF is looking oversold, as per key daily chart indicator.  The hourly chart is reporting a triangle breakout.  A corrective bounce to the 5-day average hurdle could be in the offing.  EUR/CHF is looking to regain some poise from three-year lows reached on Wednesday. The pair is currently trading at 1.0775, representing marginal gains on the day, having hit a low of 1.0742 yesterday. That was the lowest level since April 2017. The bounce could be extended...

The SNB said its interventions were transparent and ‘motivated purely by monetary policy’ (Keystone) The US Treasury has called on the Swiss government to cut taxes and spend more public money, after it added the country to a watchlist of those it accuses of currency manipulation. The Swiss franc nudged up to a near three-year high against the euro on Tuesday as markets anticipated the move would limit the Swiss National Bank’s appetite for aggressive action to try...

Frontseite der Financial Times vom 16. Januar 2015 – dem Tag nach dem SNB-“Frankenschock”. Bild: cash Nicht eine, sondern zwei Massnahmen erschütterten am 15. Januar 2015 die Schweiz und die internationale Finanzwelt. Der unmittelbare Schock war die Aufhebung der Kursuntergrenze zum Euro, welche die Nationalbank seit 2011 bei 1,20 Franken verteidigt hatte. Was Märkte, Anleger und vor allem Sparer erst mit der Zeit so richtig zu spüren begannen, war die Einführung des...

[This article is part of the Understanding Money Mechanics series, by Robert P. Murphy. The series will be published as a book in late 2020.] This chapter will provide a brief sketch of the historical context in which the Federal Reserve was founded, summarize some of the major changes to the Fed’s institutional structure and mandate over the years, and end with a snapshot of the Fed’s current governing structure. (Chapters 2 and 3 of this book cover more of the...

In 2020, increasing monetary and fiscal stimulus will be the equivalent of spraying gasoline on a fire to extinguish it. Economically, the 11 years since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 have been one relatively coherent era of modest growth, rising wealth/income inequality and coordinated central bank stimulus every time a crisis threatened to disrupt the domestic or global economy. This era will draw to a close in 2020 and a new era of destabilization and...

I should know better than to make declarative all-or-none statements like this. I said there isn’t any data which comports with the idea of a global turnaround, this shakeup in sentiment which since early September has gone right from one extreme to the other. Recession fears predominated in summer only to be (rather easily) replaced by near euphoria (again). Narrative yes, sentiment maybe, data nope. The vast majority of the economic accounts, anyway. There are a...