Tag Archives: Featured

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.20% to 1.1846 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, April 11(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Between Syria, trade tensions, and the US special investigator into Russia’s attempt to influence the US election, market participants are cautious as they wait for another shoe to drop. The US equity market recovery yesterday has short...

The market volatility this year has been blamed on a lot of factors. The initial selloff was blamed on a hotter than expected wage number in the January employment report that supposedly sparked concerns about inflation – although a similar number this month wasn’t mentioned as a cause of last Friday’s selling. The unwinding of the short volatility trade exacerbated the situation and voila, 12% came off the market in a...

Since 2013 China continues to absorb physical gold from the rest of the world at a staggering pace. Worth noting is that gold imported into the Chinese domestic market  is not allowed to be returned in the foreseeable future. Because ownership and the disposition of these volumes of gold likely will be of great importance next time around the international monetary system is under stress, it’s well worth tracking...

At the end of every quarter, the IMF publishes the most authoritative reserve data with a three-month lag. On Good Friday, the IMF published Q4 17 reserve holdings. A recent article on Bloomberg played up an economist’s forecast that euro reserves would increase by $500 bln over the next couple of years. A review of the reserve data may help us evaluate such a claim, which if true, could have important implications for...

- Click to enlarge Neuchâtel, 4 April 2018 (FSO) – Facts provide the foundation for political and social dialogue. But what happens when instead of facts, purposely spread untruths begin to dominate that dialogue? And what can be done about it, or better still, what can be done to stop it? Possible answers can be found at the conference entitled “Truth in numbers – the role of data in a world of fact, fiction and...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.25% to 1.1807 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, April 10(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates It did not look so good. The S&P 500 fell about 1.65% in the last couple hours of trading yesterday paring its gains. Press reports indicated that President Trump’s lawyer’s office, house and hotel were the subject of search warrants. A...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Irredeemably Yours… Yuan Stops Rallying at the Wrong Moment The so-called petro-yuan was to revolutionize the world of irredeemable fiat paper currencies. Well, since its launch on March 26 — it has gone down. It was to be an enabler for oil companies who were desperate to sell oil for gold, but could not do so until the...

Since failing systems are incapable of structural reform, collapse is the only way forward. Systems fail for a wide range of reasons, but I’d like to focus on two that are easy to understand but hard to pin down. Federal Government, 2005 - 2018 - Click to enlarge 1. Systems are accretions of structures and modifications laid down over time.Each layer adds complexity which is viewed at the time as a solution....

Unemployment Rate (not seasonally adjusted) Unemployment registered in March 2018 – According to surveys by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), at the end of March 2018 130’413 unemployed people were registered at the regional employment agencies (RAV), 13’517 less than in the previous month. The unemployment rate fell from 3.2% in February 2018 to 2.9% in the month under review. Compared to the same...

The US jobs growth slowed in March more than expected, but the details of the report suggest investors and policymakers will look through it. The poor weather seemed to have played a role. Construction jobs fell (15k) for the first time since last July, and the hours worked by production employees and non-supervisory worker slipped. United States The 103k net new jobs were the least since last September when storms...