La Financière de l'Echiquier
Alexandre Sauterel
11 Avenue du General Dufour / 1204 Geneve
Phone: +41 79 576 55 98
E-Mail: asauterel@lfde.com
Web: https://www.lfde.com/en-ch/
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Provider News
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Back in the USSR?
16.03.2022 14:35 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: The Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February has delivered the grimmest of times to its victims, to the wounded and to the exiled. Observers further afield are reminded of such dark episodes as the USSR invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 or that of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990. In both of these cases, the theoretically better-armed assailant was forced to retreat in the end… Moreover, the nostalgia for the...
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Attack on the world order
01.03.2022 16:45 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: Vladimir Putin launched a lightning offensive against Ukraine in the early hours of 24 February. The weeks of diplomatic negotiations were in vain. His plan was obviously pre-determined, as this declaration of war may have been recorded a few days earlier in parallel with the announcement of the rupture of the Minsk Agreement. Russia's invasion was unanimously condemned by almost all states and reshuffles the...
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China: In the country of meagre inflation
23.02.2022 10:57 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: As the world battles with soaring prices, one country is still holding out against inflation: China. There, order and beauty reigns, alongside moderate inflation. In January, it was running at 0.90% year-on-year – a decline! Core inflation paints the same picture, at a three-year average of 1.1%. Of course, China is not in the same class as the overall champion of deflation, Japan, where underlying “inflation” is...
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ECB: A necessary shift in mindset
08.02.2022 14:01 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: Everyone is now aware of the US Federal Reserve’s switch to a more restrictive monetary policy. The Bank of England continues to tighten its stance, with a further 0.25% hike in its key interest rate. Close to half the members of its Monetary Policy Committee voted in favour of a rate rise of double this magnitude (+0.50%), implying that the pace of its normalisation was behind the curve. The European Central...
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The end of the central bank parachute
01.02.2022 21:46 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: It was a tense moment for markets as US Fed Chair Jerome Powell took the floor to speak after the FOMC meeting last Wednesday. Monetary tightening was to be confirmed as inevitable in view of abnormally high inflation and extremely positive developments in the labour market. Yet after the falls seen since the beginning of the year, it seemed reasonable to assume that these announcements were already fully priced...
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Macroeconomics : Will the ECB follow in the footsteps of the Fed?
25.01.2022 21:53 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: In the minutes of the last meeting of the European Central Bank (ECB), the talk was of inflation “driven largely by temporary factors that were expected to ease in the course of 2022”, although a “higher for longer” inflation scenario cannot be ruled out, and ultimately a desire to avoid “any premature scaling back of monetary stimulus and asset purchases”. This type of language harks back to reports from the US...
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US inflation: One spiral after another
18.01.2022 17:30 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: The issue of rising prices has gradually infiltrated the conversations of major economic stakeholders in the US, penetrating first the hushed offices of the Fed, and then corporate board rooms. And now this topic is being discussed around dinner tables across the country. Although unexpected, this is quite appropriate, as one of the few leading indicators available today for the entirety of 2021 – the consumer...
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Greenwashing: A challenge to us all
13.01.2022 17:07 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: For La Financière de l’Echiquier (LFDE), a responsible investor for 30 years, transparency is king. We make it a point to clearly lay out our process and our products, making sure that we use our clients’ savings in keeping with the reality of managing those savings. When faced with greenwashing or certain aggressive or excessive marketing strategies, asking a few questions can make things clear. Is this a...
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The price of value
11.01.2022 16:32 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: Corporate valuations are the bread and butter of stock market participants. And with so many participants, you might think that the valuation of each company would always be in the right ballpark. Yet this is far from the case, at least in the eyes of fund managers focused on the least expensive securities relative to their earnings or balance sheet value. In their view, huge swathes of the market look extremely...
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Here come the hawks
05.01.2022 14:17 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: There’s no mistaking the shift to more restrictive policies by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) at its last monetary policy meeting: the pace of tapering will double, FOMC members now expect three rate hikes in 2022 and the same again in 2023, and the focus is on combatting inflation rather than full employment at any cost. Whilst not a surprise – the ground had been well prepared in advance – this was nonetheless a...
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Real or surreal interest rates?
15.12.2021 15:09 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: The inflationary frenzy sweeping the US and the eurozone has automatically plunged real interest rates – nominal interest rates less inflation – into negative territory. We have to go back to the interwar years or the hyperinflation of the 1970s to find similar cases. Yet the catalysts were quite different then: shortages during the world wars and the oil shock in the 1970s. In many respects, the current...
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Will there be presents in our Christmas stockings?
13.12.2021 10:26 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: Shortages. Not long ago, the idea of empty supermarket shelves was unthinkable in the developed world. But, for months now, it has been only too real. The Covid crisis, geopolitical tensions and catastrophic weather events increasingly disrupted the world's supply chains and logistics. Gaps and hold-ups gradually spread to affect every sector of the economy. Back to global scarcity How did we get here? In a...
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The Fed with its back to the wall
07.12.2021 22:46 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: The Chair of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) is now on the defensive. Having stuck to his assertion that US inflation was transitory for over a year (in spite of a plethora of indications to the contrary), he has just acknowledged that this categorisation is no longer tenable. In addition to the mea culpa implicit in this admission, this ushers in a new era for the Fed: it is now inevitable that monetary policy will...
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Echiquier Space – The final frontier in investment
03.12.2021 13:32 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: Launched on 31 May 2021, Echiquier Space is the first thematic fund in Europe dedicated to space and its ecosystem. Interview mit Rolando Grandi, CFA, Fund Manager Why did you launch Echiquier Space in 2021? Our international thematic equity team identified this structural trend three years ago. The field has deepened since then, and the ecosystem has reached a turning point in 2021. Once the exclusive...
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A flash in the pan or a wildfire?
30.11.2021 17:48 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: A gust of panic swept in after Thanksgiving. Investors have woken up to a hangover: the major indices dropped between 3% and 4% as soon as the European markets opened. To understand why, we need look no further than concern about the emergence of a new variant discovered in South Africa. Its numerous mutations are fuelling fear that it is more contagious than other known variants, and also that available...
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An insatiable appetite
23.11.2021 14:23 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: Is inflation transitory or not? Are we seeing a limited rise in the price of goods and services, or is it ratcheting up into a wage-price spiral? Is this phenomenon likely to resolve itself, or do we need tough action from central banks? Although successive reports are increasingly pointing to persistent inflation, the debate around prices continues to rage on markets. On the other hand, the momentum behind the...
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Inflation – a political issue
17.11.2021 13:05 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: In the last few years whilst inflation was weak, it was primarily an issue for monetary policy, or at most, economic policy. But with the record highs seen recently – 6.2% annual inflation in the US in October – it is becoming a burning and purely political issue. Joe Biden has even declared it his “top priority”, having barely mentioned it previously. If the issue has suddenly thrust its way into the...
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Central banks: The counterattack of the doves
09.11.2021 16:51 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: One of the central themes on markets over the last few months has been the prospect of the removal of accommodative monetary policies, against the backdrop of strong economic recovery and persistent inflationary pressure. We have just passed a key milestone. The US Federal Reserve has officially announced that it will begin tapering its asset purchases programme by USD 15 billion per month, with an end to the...
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ECB: Owl or ostrich?
03.11.2021 08:19 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: “Actually, we talked about inflation, inflation, inflation”. This is how Christine Lagarde summed up discussions at the most recent meeting of the ECB. What’s more, the word inflation was used no fewer than 65 times during the press conference. However, although inflation seems to be the subject of close scrutiny in Frankfurt, we are entitled to wonder whether Ms Lagarde, who has defined herself as an owl, has...
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Same cause, different effects
27.10.2021 21:22 - La Financière de l'Echiquier: US 10-year Treasury yields closed last Thursday at 1.70%, close to the late-March highs and almost 40 bps above last month’s level. European yields, especially in Germany, followed a similar pattern. This renewed upward trend in yields, beginning in August 2021, gathered pace after the Federal Reserve meeting of 22 September, which closed with the Fed adopting a less-than-accommodative stance. Given what had...
