Tag Archive: newsletter

Gold Falls 0.6percent After Having A Seven Year Weekly High Close and 4percent Gain In January

2020-02-04

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2020-02-04

Spot Gold Price
Gold falls from seven year high weekly close ◆ Gold prices fell 0.6% today after reaching a seven year weekly high close at $1587.90/oz on Friday, gold’s highest weekly price settlement since March 2013, a 4% gain in January and its second straight monthly climb.

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February Monthly

2020-02-03

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2020-02-03

The global capital markets were roiled in recent weeks by the new virus that jumped species in China.  It is contagious during the incubation periods and appears similar though more aggressive than  SARS in 2003-2004.  And China is larger and significantly more integrated into the global political economy.    

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Monetary Metals Gold Brief 2020

2020-02-03

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2020-02-03

Gold Fundamental Price
We apologize for not posting articles during January. We have been busy, and going forward will publish a separate Market Report every Monday morning plus macroeconomics essays later in the week, as time permits.

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FX Daily, February 3: Inauspicious Start to the Year of the (Flying) Rat

2020-02-03

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2020-02-03

Overview: The Year of the Rat is off to an inauspicious start as apparently a fly rat (a bat) virus has jumped to humans. China's markets re-opening amid much fanfare, and the Shanghai Composite dropped 7.7%, which is about what the futures in Singapore had anticipated. Several other markets in the region (Japan's Nikkei, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand) fell by more than 1%.

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How Keynesian Ideas Weaken Economic Fundamentals

2020-02-03

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2020-02-03

Whenever there are signs that the economy is likely to fall into an economic slump most experts advise that the central bank and the government should embark on loose monetary and fiscal policies to counter the possible economic recession. In this sense, most experts are following the ideas of the English economist John Maynard Keynes.

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Julius Bär to cut 300 jobs after 2019 profit drop

2020-02-03

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2020-02-03

Julius Bar
Swiss wealth manager Julius Bär will cut 300 jobs this year, its chief executive said on Monday, as it looks to boost profitability after a double-digit percentage earnings fall in 2019. The private bank wants to boost profitability with a new three-year strategy to deal with continued margin pressures, Philipp Rickenbacher said.

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EM Preview for the Week Ahead

2020-02-03

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2020-02-03

Emerging Markets Currencies
EM remains vulnerable to deteriorating risk sentiment as the coronavirus spreads.  China announced a series of measures over the weekend to help support its financial markets, but this may not be enough to turn sentiment around yet.  China markets reopen Monday after the extended Lunar New Year holiday and it won’t be pretty.

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Why Democracy Doesn’t Give Us What We Want

2020-02-02

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2020-02-02

That Americans are in the throes of a crisis in democracy has become a commonplace refrain of late. I have noticed that almost all such commentary treats political democracy, implicitly or explicitly, as the ideal. Yet in truth it is a seriously flawed ideal. In fact, as F. A. Hayek noted years ago.

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History Shows You Should Infer Nothing From Powell’s Pause

2020-02-02

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2020-02-02

The Fed Midpoint, 2007-2008
Jay Powell says that three’s not a crowd, at least not for his rate cuts, but four would be. As usual, central bankers like him always hedge and say that “should conditions warrant” the FOMC will be more than happy to indulge (the NYSE). But what he means in his heart of hearts is that there probably won’t be any need.

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The Era of Boom and Bust Isn’t Over

2020-02-02

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2020-02-02

At the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer at Bridgewater Associates, attracted attention when he suggested in a news interview that the boom and bust cycle as we have come to know it in the last decades may have ended. This viewpoint may well have been encouraged by the fact that the latest economic upswing ("boom") has been going for around a decade and that an end is not in sight as suggested by incoming...

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Three Straight Quarters of 2 percent, And Yet Each One Very Different

2020-02-02

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2020-02-02

Eurodollar Disruption, Peaks & Troughs, 2011-2019
Headline GDP growth during the fourth quarter of 2019 was 2.05849% (continuously compounded annual rate), slightly lower than the (revised) 2.08169% during Q3. For the year, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) puts total real output at $19.07 trillion, or annual growth of 2.33% and down from 2.93% in 2018. Last year was weaker than 2017, the second lowest out of the six since 2013.

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Prognosen sind das Papier nicht wert

2020-02-01

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2020-02-01

Globale Konjunktur: Talsohle erreicht
Für das Jahr 2019 prognostizierten die Auguren zwei weitere Zins-Erhöhungen durch das FED. Diese Erwartung schien wie in Stein gemeisselt, weshalb die Aktienmärkte im letzten Quartal 2018 auch massiv nachgaben und die Prognosen für das Jahr 2019 entsprechend eintrübten.

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Electric cars gain momentum: number of new registrations more than doubled in 2019

2020-02-01

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2020-02-01

New marketings of passenger cars by fuel
In 2019, 6 160 300 motor vehicles circulated on Swiss roads. This was 46 500 or 0.8% more than in the previous year. Three quarters of the entire fleet were passenger cars, including an increasing number of electric cars: of the 312 900 cars that were newly registered in 2019, 13 200 or 4.2% were purely battery operated.

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Second-Order Effects: The Unexpectedly Slippery Path to Dow 10,000

2020-02-01

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2020-02-01

China Total Debt and Nominal GDP, 1995-2017
Dow 30,000 is "unsinkable," just like the Titanic. A recent Barrons cover celebrating the euphoric inevitability of Dow 30,000 captured the mainstream zeitgeist perfectly: Corporate America is firing on all cylinders, the Federal Reserve's god-like powers will push stocks higher regardless of any other reality, blah blah blah.

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Hawaii Representatives Consider Ending Taxation on Sound Money

2020-02-01

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2020-02-01

Introduced by Representative Okimoto (R-36), House Bill 1830 removes sales and use tax against gold and silver bullion and currency in Hawaii. Under current law, Hawaii citizens are discouraged from insuring their savings against the devaluation of the dollar because they are penalized with taxation for doing so. Passage of this measure would remove disincentives to holding gold and silver for this purpose.

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FX Daily, January 31: Stocks Finishing on Poor Note, while the Dollar and Bonds Firm

2020-01-31

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2020-01-31

Overview: It was as if the World Health Organization's recognition of that the new coronavirus is an international health emergency was the catalyst that the markets needed. US equities recovered smartly and managed to close higher on the session. However, the coattails were short, and follow-through buying of US shares fizzled.

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Swiss Retail Sales, December 2019: -0.4 percent Nominal and 0.1 percent Real

2020-01-31

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2020-01-31

Switzerland Retail Sales YoY, December 2019
Turnover adjusted for sales days and holidays fell in the retail sector by 0.4% in nominal terms in December 2019 compared with the previous year. Seasonally adjusted, nominal turnover fell by 0.4% compared with the previous month.

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Dollar Firm Ahead of BOE Decision

2020-01-31

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2020-01-31

The World Health Organization called an emergency meeting today; the dollar continues to climb. The FOMC meeting was a non-event; US advance Q4 GDP will be reported. Risk-off sentiment has derailed curve steepening trades. Implied rates still suggest that today’s BOE meeting is a coin toss.

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Peru cracks down on illegal gold mining

2020-01-31

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2020-01-31

Wildcat mining has devastated large chunks of the Peruvian Amazon, where gold is extracted and makes its way to the refineries and banks in Switzerland.swissinfo.ch visited the southeastern region of Madre de Dios and spoke to artisanal miners who have benefited from the gold rush to educate their families and create jobs, as well as those who have fallen afoul of the law.

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Freedom and Prosperity: The Importance of Sound Money

2020-01-31

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2020-01-31

Money and Gold
Sound money is a key to a free and prosperous society. That principle was clearly reflected in the monetary system that the Constitution established when it called the federal government into existence. Our ancestors didn’t trust government officials with power. They believed that the greatest threat to their own freedom and well-being lay not with some foreign regime but rather with their own government.

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