Tag Archive: Switzerland

European Stocks Greet The New Year By Rising To One Year Highs; Euro Slides

2017-01-04

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2017-01-04

Markit Eurozone Manufacturing PMI
While most of the world is enjoying it last day off from the 2017 holiday transition, with Asia's major markets closed for the New Year holiday, along with Britain and Switzerland in Europe and the US and Canada across the Atlantic, European stocks climbed to their highest levels in over a year on Monday after the Markit PMI survey showed manufacturing production in the Eurozone rose to the highest level since April 2011.

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Davos Staff May Sleep In Shipping Containers As Billionaires Swarm Resort

2016-12-29

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2016-12-29

davos 2017
With January just around the corner, the world's billionaires, CEOs, politicians and oligarchs prepare to take their private planes to Davos, Switzerland for their annual convocation at the World Economic Forum, where they discuss such diverse topics as global warming due to greenhouse gases (which exempts Gulfstream jets) and the dangers of record wealth inequality (which exempts them), while snacking on $39 hot dogs and $50 Caesar salads.

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Credit Suisse Settles With DOJ For $5.3 Billion; Will Pay $2.5 Billion Civil Penalty

2016-12-25

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2016-12-25

Credit Suisse
Shortly after last night's news that Deutsche Bank had settled with the DOJ for $7.2 billion, of which it would pay $3.1 billion in a civil penalty, far lower than the $14 billion number initially speculated (the stock popped as much as 4% before settling just over 2% higher currently), Credit Suisse likewise closed the books on its pre-crisis RMBS fraud when the largest Swiss bank agreed to pay $5.28 billion to resolve a U.S.

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As Central Bankers Spin

2016-12-25

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2016-12-25

I know that I resemble the old guy in this cartoon, standing by helplessly as I watch central bankers experiment with the global economy. Bubbles are blown, again, in several asset classes. Negative interest rates have become an acceptable concept, as if they are just words and have no real economic meaning.

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ECB Assets Hit 35 percent Of Eurozone GDP; Draghi Owns 9.2 percent Of European Corporate Bond Market

2016-12-23

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2016-12-23

Weekly purchases under the expanded asset purchase programme
As global markets bask in the glow of the Trumpflation recovery, the ECB continues to be busy providing the actual levitating power behind what DB recently dubbed global "helicopter money", by buying copious amounts of bonds on a daily basis (at least until tomorrow when the ECB goes on brief monetization hiatus, and Italy will be on its own for the next two weeks).

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Kosten eines Vollgeld-Systems sind hoch (Costly Sovereign Money)

2016-12-22

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2016-12-22

Niepelt Keystone
Eine Umsetzung der Vollgeld-Initiative würde grossen Schaden anrichten und dürfte im Ergebnis selbst die Initianten enttäuschen. Verbesserungen verspricht dagegen eine «sanfte» Reform: die Einführung von elektronischem SNB-Geld für alle.

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“This Is Total Chaos” – Venezuela Shuts Colombia Border To Stop “Mafia” Currency Smuggling

2016-12-18

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2016-12-18

Banknotes
As if things were not already chaotic enough in the socialist utopia of Venezuela, following President Nicolas Maduro's decision to follow Indian PM Modi's playbook and announce that the nation's largest denomination bill (100-Bolivars - worth around 3c) will be pulled from circulation in 72 hours, he has tonight closed the border to Colombia to crackdown on currency smuggling by so-called "mafias".

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WTI Crude tumbles To $49 Handle, Erases OPEC/NOPEC Deal Gains

2016-12-15

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2016-12-15

WTI Crude
But, but, but... growth, and inflation, and supply cuts, and growth again... Well that de-escalated quickly... As Libya restarts exports and The Fed sends the dollar soaring so WTI crude prices just broke back to a $49 handle for the first time since Dec 8th.

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Swiss 10 year bond yields still negative, but approaching zero.

2016-12-12

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2016-12-12

Treasury Yields
The global bond rout returned with a bang, sending 10Y US Treasury yields as much as six basis points higher to 2.53%, the highest level in over two years. The selloff happened as oil prices surged by more than 5% following Saturday's agreement by NOPEC nations agreed to slash production, leading to rising inflation pressures. At last check, the 10Y was trading at 2.505%, up from 2.462% at Friday and on track for its highest close since September...

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Which Of These Would You Rather Have In Your Safe?

2016-12-10

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2016-12-10

Safe
Let’s say you have two equal size safety deposit boxes. One box you completely fill up with stacks of $100 bills. The other box you fill up with gold. Which of the two is “worth” more? It’s easy to calculate. A stack of 100x $100 bills is 6.14 inches long, 2.61 inches wide, and 0.43 inches tall. That’s a volume of 6.89 cubic inches (112.92 cubic centimeters… and we’ll use the metric system from here on out because it really does make more...

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Adoption Of The Euro Has Been ‘Unequivocally Bad’ For Southern European Economies

2016-12-10

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2016-12-10

Some say that the common currency prevents less productive economies from cheating by weakening their national currencies and forces them to become more efficient and competitive. Industrial production data shows that it is not the case. Italy, France, Greece and Portugal have not only stopped producing more; they are producing now less than in 1990! The decay started immediately after the introduction of the euro in 2002!

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Global Warm-Ongering: What Happens If Trump Takes US Out Of Paris Agreement?

2016-12-10

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2016-12-10

Global Emissions
For all the shock, horror, and aghast of global warm-ongers, comes a startling revelation: It’s Irrelevant if US Pulls Out of Paris Accord. Donald Trump has sent his clearest message yet about his plans for reshaping US policy on global warming by choosing a chief environmental regulator who has questioned the science of climate change.

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Gold In London And Hong Kong Is Used To Settle COMEX Futures

2016-12-08

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2016-12-08

Exhibit 1.
Physical gold located in Hong Kong and London is used to settle COMEX gold futures contracts through “Exchange For Physical” trading in the over-the-counter market. This post is a sequel to Understanding GOFO And The Gold Wholesale Market and COMEX Gold Futures Can Be Settled Directly With Eligible Inventory - in which Exchange For Physical (EFP) trading is explained and how it can increase or decrease open interest at the COMEX.

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Net National Savings Rate, the Best Alternative Indicator to GDP Growth

For us the Net National Savings Rate is the best alternative indictator to GDP growth. It is positively correlated with the change in wealth, with the establishment of future productive capacity, the price of government bonds and currency valuations. But today GDP growth is often negatively correlated to the Net Savings Rate. Hence GDP is often a less useful measure.

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The War On Cash Is Happening Faster Than We Could Have Imagined

2016-12-03

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2016-12-03

It’s happening faster than we could have ever imagined. Every time we turn around, it seems, there’s another major assault in the War on Cash. India is the most notable recent example– the embarrassing debacle a few weeks ago in which the government, overnight, “demonetized” its two largest denominations of cash, leaving an entire nation in chaos.

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Q1 – Q3 2016 China Net Gold Import Hits 905 Tonnes

2016-11-28

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2016-11-28

Shanghai Gold Exchange SGE Withdrawals September 2016
Withdrawals from the vaults of the Shanghai Gold Exchange, which can be used as a proxy for Chinese wholesale gold demand, reached 1,406 tonnes in the first three quarters of 2016. Supply that went through the central bourse consisted of at least 905 tonnes imported gold, roughly 335 tonnes of domestic mine output, and 166 tonnes in scrap supply and other flows recycled through the exchange.

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Global Wealth Update: 0.7 percent Of Adults Control $116.6 Trillion In Wealth

2016-11-23

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2016-11-23

Global Wealth Pyramid
Today Credit Suisse released its latest annual global wealth report, which traditionally lays out what is perhaps the biggest reason for the recent "anti-establishment" revulsion: an unprecedented concentration of wealth among a handful of people, as shown in its infamous global wealth pyramid, an arrangement which as observed by the "shocking" political backlash of the past few months suggests that the lower 'levels' of the pyramid are...

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Canadian Bank Starts Charging Negative 0.75percent Rate On Most Foreign Cash Balances

2016-11-22

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2016-11-22

BMO Nesbitt Burns
Despite speculation over the past year that Canada may join Japan and Europe in the NIRP club and launch negative interest rates, so far the BOC has stood its ground. However, starting on December 22, for the broker dealer clients of one of Canada's most reputable financial institutions, BMO Nesbitt Burns, it will be as if the Canadian bank has cut its deposit rate on most currencies, to match the deposit rate of Switzerland.

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Former CEO Of UBS And Credit Suisse: “Central Banks Are Past The Point Of No Return, It Will All End In A Crash”

2016-11-21

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2016-11-21

Remember when bashing central banks and predicting financial collapse as a result of monetary manipulation and intervention was considered "fake news" within the "serious" financial community, disseminated by fringe blogs? In an interview with Swiss Sonntags Blick titled appropriately enough "A Recession Is Sometimes Necessary", the former CEO of UBS and Credit Suisse, Oswald Grübel, lashed out by criticizing the growing strength of central banks...

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BIS: The VIX is Dead, The Dollar is the new “Fear Indicator”

2016-11-20

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2016-11-20

Leverage of US securities broker-dealer sector
Over the past few years, one of the recurring themes on this website has been an ongoing discussion of how the VIX has lost its predictive value as a market risk indicator. This culminated recently with a note by Russel Clark who explained in clear term why the "VIX is now broken." Today, in a fascinating note Hyun Song Shin, head of research at the Bank for International Settlements, the "central banks' central bank" has agreed with the...

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