Tag Archives: newsletter

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...

◆ Severe funding pressures in U.S. money markets tipped to resurface heading into year-end by JPMorgan who warn that financial stresses are likely to ‘get much worse’ ◆ Goldman Sachs and Bank of America also warn funding issues remain (see below) ◆ Federal Reserve will start buying $60 billion of Treasury bills every month ◆ Funding markets are on notice for a possible year-end liquidity crunch ◆ Growing stresses in U.S. banking and financial system should support...

◆ The gold reserves of the German Bundesbank rose in September for the first time in 21 years; German gold reserves rose to 108.34 million ounces in September from 108.25 million ounces last month ◆ It was the Germany’s first gold purchase since 1998 and while the amounts are not huge at 90,000 troy ounces, it highlights the Bundesbank and German concerns about the global monetary system and euro itself as Christine Lagarde takes over the ECB ◆ International...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.06% to 1.0999 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 23(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: UK Prime Minister Johnson is neither dead in a ditch as he said he would prefer to be than request an extension of Brexit, nor will the UK leave the EU at the end of the month. Yesterday’s vote rejected the attempt to fast-track the legislation needed to support the divorce...

USD/CHF struggles to hold the latest recovery gains. A seven-week-old rising trend line, 50% Fibonacci retracement acts as the closest upside barrier. 61.8% of Fibonacci retracement offers adjacent support. The USD/CHF pair’s recovery from 0.9840 seems to lack momentum as the quote witnesses a pullback to 0.9900 ahead of the European session opening on Wednesday. With this, the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level of September-October rise, at 0.9885, acts as the close...

Affected JTI staff are unhappy with the proposed resettlement package, and management’s lack of transparency about job cuts and future plans. Almost 100 Japan Tobacco International (JTI) staff protested outside their Geneva headquarters on Tuesday against job cuts. Around a quarter of the Geneva workforce are affected by major restructuring plans. Last month the multinational firm behind cigarette brands like Winston, Camel and Benson & Hedges...