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Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.04% to 1.0856 CHF. EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc, June 12(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ) - Click to enlarge FX Rates The US dollar is trading within its pre-weekend range against the major currencies as participants await the central bank meeting starting in the middle of the week. The Federal Reserve, Bank of England, and the Bank of Japan meet.  Only the Fed is expected to hike...

PostFinance could be obliged to take on the Swiss abroad. (Keystone/Gaetan Bally) New efforts are underway in parliament to ensure that the Swiss abroad can keep banking and other aspects of a financial life in Switzerland. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, an increasing number of Swiss citizens in other countries have been experiencing trouble keeping a bank account in Switzerland, especially if they reside in...

Swiss Franc Speculators were net short CHF in January 2015, shortly before the end of the peg, with 26.4K contracts. Then again in December 2015, when they expected a Fed rate hike, with 25.5K contracts. The biggest short CHF, however, happened in June 2007, when speculators were net short 80K contracts. Shortly after, the U.S. subprime crisis started. The carry trade against CHF collapsed. The...

Summary: FOMC, BoE, and BOJ meet next week; only the Fed is expected to change policy. High frequency data may be less important than the central bank meetings and politics in the week ahead. UK political situation is far from resolved, and US drama continues, while several hot spots in the EMU are emerging. Three of the four G5 central banks meet in the week ahead: the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and...

Stock Markets EM FX was mixed last week but in general held up well in the aftermath of Super Thursday. The global backdrop seems relatively benign right now despite the FOMC meeting this week. We still think investors have to be picky. TRY, ZAR, and BRL at current levels seem too rich given the underlying risks in all three. On the flip side, we think China is looking stable right now and should help Emerging...

Swiss Franc vs USD and EUR The US Dollar has lost 4% against the franc since the beginning of May, while the euro is down only 1%. Most important events in this week were the ECB meeting and the UK elections. The inability of the Tory Party to secure a parliamentary majority spurred a sharp decline in sterling. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, June 10(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, )The picture shows that FX traders went...

As the bicycle celebrates its 200th year, advocacy group Pro Velo Switzerland says there is still a lot of unfulfilled potential when it comes to Switzerland’s use of the two-wheeled mode of transport. On June 12, 1817, a German aristocrat named Karl Drais rode 14 kilometres (8.7 miles) on pedal-less wooden beam with two wheels of his own invention. The eponymous contraption, the draisine, was the direct predecessor of...

Companies like Amazon have been forced to review their global tax strategy in light of the BEPS probe (Keystone) Switzerland has officially agreed to a raft of measures to combat the tax avoidance tricks of multinational companies. More than 100 countries have pledged to tackle the so-called base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) shenanigans. Huge companies, such as Starbucks, Amazon and Fiat, have been publically...

Mass Infusions of New Credit “The bank is something more than men, I tell you.  It’s the monster.  Men made it, but they can’t control it.” – John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath Something strange and somewhat senseless happened this week. On Tuesday, the price of gold jumped over $13 per ounce.  This, in itself, is nothing too remarkable.  However, at precisely the same time gold was jumping, the yield on the 10-Year...

I have been writing for many years that they really don’t know what they are doing. I only wish it was that simple. There has been developing another layer or dimension to that condition, a second derivative of stupid, whereby when faced with this now well-established fact the same people, experts and authorities all, they have no frame of reference to figure out what next to do. In other words, they really don’t know...