Tag Archive: newsletter

FX Daily, July 10: Surge in Coronavirus Spooks Investors as China Takes Profits

Record fatalities in a few US states, coupled with new travel restrictions in Italy and Australia, have given markets a pause ahead of the weekend. News that two state-backed funds in China took profits snapped the eight-day advance in Shanghai at the same time as there is an attempt to rein in the use of margin.

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Tour group blames coronavirus for 70 Swiss job cuts 

German tour operator TUI is to close eight of its 62 branches in Switzerland with the loss of around 70 jobs, owing to the effects of the coronavirus crisis.

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Second Wave Global Trade

Unlike some sentiment indicators, the ISM Non-manufacturing, in particular, actual trade in goods continued to contract in May 2020. Both exports and imports fell further, though the rate of descent has improved. In fact, that’s all the other, more subdued PMI’s like Markit’s have been suggesting.

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Stocks Always Go up. Until They Don’t.

Economist Irving Fisher famously said just before the 1929 stock market crash, “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” Whoops. Fisher wasn’t just any old economist. Joseph Schumpeter called him "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced." Milton Friedman and James Tobin agreed.

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Inside Geneva: World trade at a crossroads

In this episode of our Inside Geneva podcast, we look at the role of the World Trade Organization as it chooses a new leader amid challenging times. 

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FX Daily, July 9: The Dollar is Sold through CNY7.0 as Chinese Equities Continue to Rally

Investors continue to clamor into risk assets.  Led by Chinese shares, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index pushed higher for the third session this week to new five-month highs.  Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is trying to snap a two-day decline with the help of better than expected revenues for its largest tech company.

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New Geneva platform to ‘anticipate societal changes’ 

A new international platform is to be launched in Geneva to anticipate the effects of societal changes amidst the Covid-19 crisis, Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga said on Wednesday. 

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The American Economy in Four Words: Neofeudal Extortion, Decline, Collapse

Our society has a legal structure of self-rule and ownership of capital, but in reality it is a Neofeudal Oligarchy. Now that the pandemic is over and the economy is roaring again--so the stock market says--we're heading straight back up into the good old days of 2019. Nothing to worry about, we've recovered the trajectory of higher and higher, better every day in every way.

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The “Old” vs. the “New” Liberalism

It is not disputed that the popular meaning of liberal has changed drastically over time. It is a well-known story how, around 1900, in English-speaking countries and elsewhere, the term was captured by writers who were essentially social democrats.

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Dollar Bid as Market Sentiment Yet to Recover

The US has started the formal process of withdrawing from the WHO; the dollar continues to benefit from risk-off sentiment but remains stuck in recent ranges. The White House is asking Congress to pass another $1 trln stimulus plan by early August; President Trump hosts Mexican President AMLO for a two-day visit.

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No lack of foreign tourism demand in 2019

07.07.2020 - Foreign demand was strong in 2019. The income side of the tourism balance of payments grew, reaching a record level of CHF 17.8 billion. At the same time, people living in Switzerland did not increase their expenditure when travelling abroad, despite price conditions that were more favourable. The tourism balance of payments was negative at CHF -798 million, according to initial estimates from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).

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Umsetzung FIDLEG/FINIG: FINMA bewilligt erste Aufsichtsorganisationen

Die Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht FINMA erteilt OSIF und OSFIN die ersten Bewilligungen als Aufsichtsorganisationen, zuständig für die Aufsicht über Vermögensverwalter und Trustees. Weiter liess sie die erste Registrierungsstelle für Kundenberaterinnen und Kundenberater zu. Das Eidgenössische Finanzdepartement anerkannte ausserdem die ersten Ombudsstellen nach FIDLEG für Finanzdienstleister.

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Travel destinations seek tourists, but not the crowds

Some popular travel destinations have enjoyed the break – however temporary – from tourist crowds following Covid-19 restrictions. Others hope the hordes will return soon. Switzerland had not yet opened its border with Italy when its southern neighbour unexpectedly announced that Swiss citizens could enter the country starting on June 3.

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What Germany Must Do for a Speedy Recovery

On June 29, the German parliament reacted as parliaments normally do when there is a problem, namely, by allowing the government to spend more. In order to respond to the economic difficulties due to the corona epidemic and the government restrictions, it passed a typical Keynesian stimulus package in order to boost aggregate demand.

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FX Daily, July 07: Fade the Dollar Gains

The S&P 500 rallied 1.6% yesterday to extend the streak to a fifth consecutive session, and the longest of the year and completed the negation of a bearish technical pattern.  However, the main feature today is a wave of profit-taking on risk assets.  Most equity markets moved lower in the Asia Pacific region. Chinese markets were a notable exception.

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Motorway station supplier goes into liquidation

A company that supplies Swiss motorway service stations and convenience stores has gone into liquidation after failing to find new investors. Some 144 jobs at Lekkerland Switzerland are now at risk of disappearing by the end of the year.

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New UBS report reveals that joint financial participation is the key to gender equality

Significant majority of men and women believe women need to be equally involved in long-term financial decisions to achieve true gender equality, yet half of women let their spouses take the lead .

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Cool Video: Dollar, Trade, and China on TDA Network

I began my career as a reporter on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, covering the currency futures and short-term interest rate futures for a news wire. Among other things, I learned that often, the locals, people trading with their own money and wits, would take the opposite side of trades of the institutional players.

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Monthly Market Monitor – July 2020

Most Long-Term Trends Have Not Changed. A lot has changed over the last 4 months since the COVID virus started to impact the global economy. Asia was infected first with China at ground zero. Their economy succumbed first with a large part of the country shut down to a degree that can only be accomplished in an authoritarian regime.

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Gratuitously Impatient (For a) Rebound

Jay Powell’s 2018 case for his economic “boom”, the one which was presumably behind his hawkish aggression, rested largely upon the unemployment rate alone. A curiously thin roster for a period of purported economic acceleration, one of the few sets joining that particular headline statistic in its optimism resides in the lower tiers of all statistics.

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