Tag Archives: Featured

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.18% at 1.1178 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, June 06(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The implications of President Trump’s assessment that there has not been “nearly enough” progress in negotiations with Mexico that would avert the tariff on June 10 competing for investors’ attention, which had been squarely today’s ECB...

Weak inflation data pose a conundrum, both in terms of the growth outlook and the ECB’s policy stance. We believe the ECB will stay on hold in 2020. The euro area headline flash Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) dropped to 1.2% year on year in May from 1.7% the previous month.  Core inflation fell by 50bp to 0.8% y-o-y. While this reflects volatility stemming from the date of Easter this year, one can...

Trade, inflation expectations and economic data could well spark ‘insurance’ rate cuts by the Fed in the coming months. We now believe that the Federal Reserve (Fed) could deliver two ‘insurance’ rate cuts of 25bps in coming months (up to now, we expected rates to be on hold in 2019-2020). We see three drivers that could dictate the exact timing of these cuts: 1) a continuation of President Trump’s pro-tariff stance...

Shifting Patterns In the last issue of Seasonal Insights I have discussed Bitcoin’s seasonal pattern in the course of a year. In this issue I will show an analysis of the returns of bitcoin on individual days of the week. It seems to me that Bitcoin is particularly interesting for this type of study: it exhibits spectacular price gains, it is a very new instrument and it is unregulated. Moreover, it trades around the...

A small charge on single-use plastic bags has cut their use by 86% in two years, say food retailers. (Keystone) Consumption of single-use plastic bags in some 30 Swiss food retailers has dropped 86% since they introduced a small charge in 2016. The charge of CHF0.05 (an American nickel) per bag was introduced voluntarily under a sectoral agreement in response to a parliamentary move that would have banned single-use...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.09% at 1.115 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, June 05(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The Federal Reserve’s patience never excluded a rate cut should conditions warrant. The acknowledgment of this without signaling a change its stance is being seized upon to justify aggressive pricing of rates. At the same time, there has...

05.06.2019 – The hotel industry in Switzerland recorded 16.7 million overnight stays during the winter tourist season (November 2018 to April 2019), i.e. the best result since the winter season of 2007/2008. Compared with the same period last year this represents an increase of 0.7% (+117 000). With 8.8 million overnight stays, foreign demand rose by 1.0% (+83 000). Domestic visitors registered a slight increase of 0.4%...

Politics as practiced in a bygone era of stability no longer offers any solutions to these profound disruptions. I recently read a fascinating history of the social, political and economic context of the American Revolution: The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood. What is particularly striking is the critical role played by rapid social changes in the mid-1700s. Conventional histories focus on the...

(Ti-press) The number of packages processed by the Swiss Postexternal link office’s three parcel centres has been rising steadily since they opened 20 years ago. During that time, the centres in Härkingen, Daillens and Frauenfeld have handled more than 3.1 billion packages. On average, 800,000 parcels roll along their conveyor belts per day, Swiss Post announced on Mondayexternal link. On peak days during the Christmas...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.13% at 1.117 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, June 04(see more posts on EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The global capital markets are stabilizing today after taking a body blow of broadening the use of US tariffs (in migration dispute with Mexico), threatening the ratification of NAFTA 2.0, and still escalating hostile rhetoric between...