SGM-FX insights

UK Employment At 75.1%, employment for people aged 16-64 looks sort of OK depending on what that really means, but it does not alter the fact that there are currently 1.55 million people who are unemployed, or 4.4% of the potential workforce. Another much more significant number, is that there are currently 9.27 million people […]

Calm before the… Markets have begun this week with a somehow threatening sense of normality. Despite the volatility seen over the past week and a half, stable ranges appear to be establishing themselves in FX. Meanwhile equity market volatility is moderating. This is undoubtedly a relative calm in comparison to the volatility of last week, […]

Rotation out of the US Quite what that rotation may mean and by how much is exercising the markets and also doubtless the Chair of the Federal Reserve. For the yield on 10 year US Treasury Bonds to move from 3.99% to 4.50% in a week is extraordinary. At the same time, the US Dollar […]

Brent sub $60 The last time that oil was at this level (now clawed its way back to $62) was in February 2021, following the 18% drop in price in the past 6 days. Currently, although for very different reasons, events plus supply resemble what happened to the oil market in 2020, when during the […]

Blink Just as the President had done with tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the manifestation of Trump’s liberation day has been delayed. Markets have not taken the news quietly with US stocks soaring. The S&P closed 10% in the green yesterday with FTSE100 futures suggesting a 5% gain versus the close. Trump hasn’t rolled over […]

News Overload In the last days it has at times felt overwhelming given the plethora of Trump announcements and the less than credible attempts by his coterie of officials to explain or even more ambitiously, to justify the illiterate economic reasoning behind it all. Take Jonathan Ferro on Bloomberg, whose eyebrows nearly disappeared into the […]

No let up If you look at the headlines coming from the financial press, you’d be forgiven to think the events of the last three trading sessions were the latest financial crisis. The truth is, at least for now, it isn’t. I certainly wouldn’t argue that the destruction in value within asset prices is negligible, […]

EU Consumers While no one would pretend that the past week has been good for savers and investors, there is a glimmer of hope for EU consumers. The argument goes as follows: the EU exports EUR 500 billion of goods to the USA and imports EUR 350 billion. Conversely, the EU’s service sector is exactly […]

Weaker US Dollar As the dust settles and the tealeaves are sifted, the obvious early take is that POTUS has achieved an initial post tariff announcement reduction in the value of USD which he stated as his aim before he took office. An immediate jump in value of so called safe haven currencies Japanese Yen […]

Now that’s what I call Tariffs  The title of this briefing is an homage to that (n)ever-popular publication of CDs (formerly vinyl) that seemed to be everywhere when I was growing up. Containing the ‘best’ hits of a particular year, you never seemed to be far from a ‘now that’s what I call’ CD (or […]

US Trade War Tariffs With all markets awaiting what emanates from POTUS later today, Trump has certainly achieved one aim: getting the world’s collective attention. Increasingly desperate TV pundits have spent the past hours dragging past Trade Negotiators into the studio in an effort to get them to predict what the tariffs will look like. […]

Holding on With less than a 10% probability of a cut priced into the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) latest monetary policy decision, it is unsurprising markets open today to news of a hold. The RBA adopted a lower peak rate of benchmark interest than the likes of the UK and USA with lower inflationary […]