SGM-FX insights

Secondary effects Despite the Federal Reserve decision last night offering momentary relief to the Dollar, a structural shift in USD remains underway. There were two themes to the Federal Reserve’s decision last night. Firstly, the Fed presented a decision to hold based upon the resilience that the US economy is showing. Secondly, Powell staged a […]

European Central Bank A remarkable interview from Central Bank of Lithuania Governor Gediminas Simkus yesterday, who is also a rate setter on the Board of the ECB for two reasons: the first is the frankness with which he spoke unlike those Delphic pronouncements from most of his predecessors which could be parsed in different ways; […]

A Dollar Vacuum If you’ve ever heard the phrase, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’, you already know everything you need about today’s FX market. That is provided of course you’re not trying to analyse the rising tide itself, in this case our US Dollar. The Dollar is the counter currency to most key pairs […]

Japanese Yen By the time you read this, it is more than possible that the Bank of Japan in accord with the USA have jointly undertaken Yen intervention. The Yen strengthened sharply on Friday night as sentiment moved towards that happening. The level of USD/JPY 160 is seen as the level that will be defended. […]

Greenland Deal Do not expect details of the deal here since only a select few know what was discussed between POTUS and Mark Rutte, Head of NATO or indeed even if there is a deal as opposed to a face-saving way forward between POTUS and NATO/Europe. The suggestion is that (finally) senior Republicans have woken […]

TACO? According to media reports yesterday, the access to the hall in which Donald Trump would deliver his Davos speech holds the new Guinness world record for the largest international rugby scrum. That tells you three things, 1) Air Force one was late due to a last-minute plane replacement. 2) Security even amongst world leaders […]

UK Wage Growth With yesterday’s UK employment figures came some somewhat surprising commentary: inflation at 3.2% was good news for the Bank of England and the likelihood for a cut in interest rates had increased. The latter is of course good for the economy and particularly beleaguered householders worrying about their cheap mortgage deals running […]

Left field After this weekend, markets have been left questioning whether the White House’s pursuit of Greenland remains noise or has become a material risk. Certainly, the threat of escalating tariffs once again until a deal is achieved in the United States’ favour escalates economic risk once again. Trump’s social media foreign policy over the […]

Canola for Cars That was the deal struck by Canada’s Mark Carney with China’s President Xi on Friday evening in Beijing. The China tariff until then on canola oil imported from Canada was 85% but that will fall to 15% and in exchange Canada will levy a mere 6.1% on the imports of Chinese electric […]

K Shaped This is the term applied to an economy – in this case that of the USA – when one part is flourishing and the other is declining. No better an example than that of Delta Airlines which this week reported its Q4 2025 earnings which showed that Main cabin or Economy sales had […]

A return to ‘sell America?’ The combination of (geo)political risks mounting up in the US have invited episodes of ‘sell America’ in recent sessions. This is a theme that dominated early in 2025 during Trump’s upheaval of the global terms of trade via a manipulation of tariffs. ‘Sell America’ is the trading outcome characterised by […]

EU and Venezuela In 2024, the EU exported EUR 800 million of goods to Venezuela and imported EUR 2.1 billion, giving a trade volume of EUR 2.9 billion. The exports are mainly made up of minerals, chemicals, and machine goods, and the imports are of course primarily oil. As for the main EU country doing […]