Business

Via Global Macro Monitor,

Do the markets price risk anymore?   That seems to happens when the world is awash with central bank based liquidity.

We do see the VIX creeping back over 10 after trading with 8 handle for its only second time in history last Wednesday.

Just as with about everything else, with the exception of crude, which now seems to be pricing in some geopolitical risk,  very few markets are pricing for potential political or geopolitical shocks.

Overnight, the Swiss National Bank disclosed the composition and breakdown of its FX reserves as of June 30. There were no notable changes, as the central bank kept most of its asset allocations unchanged from the previous quarter, with equities, government bonds and "other bonds", at 20%, 68% and 12% respectively. There were also no shifts in the currency composition as shown in the table below.

By replacing low-wage cashiers and other retail workers with robots, the retail sector’s struggling companies can engineer a potentially life-saving boost in profits. But as advances in artificial intelligence continue to accelerate, according to the World Economic Forum, large swaths of laborers are going to lose their jobs, leading to unprecedented levels of unemployment.

he SEC shook the blockchain community last week when it issued a report ruling that the $50 million worth of tokens that were stolen last summer as part of a hack on the DAO were securities and should’ve been registered with the SEC. The DAO was a decentralized platform for investing in Ethereum-focused startups that was essentially an early version of the now popular Initial Coin Offerings. The report will likely slow the pace of new ICOs, as fledging company’s comprising a couple of ambitious engineers figure out how, exactly, to go about registering their projects.

In addition to the Chinese Caixin Manufacturing PMI due out shortly, which will either confirm or deny Sunday's modest decline in the official Mfg PMI, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) decision (due at 2:30pm Sydney time) headlines the region’s risk events this week.