SGM-FX insights

Thai Baht   With increasingly strident anti government demonstrations in Bangkok yesterday evening, concern is growing that Thailand is once again seeing unrest on a scale that matches the events in 2014 that resulted in a change of government and a coup. At the end of last year Thai Baht (THB) was trading around 30 […]

Data Sharing: India   The Indian government plan to regulate non personal data which will cramp the plans of Facebook, Amazon and Google in particular as they all view India’s 1.4 Billion population as a very enticing and juicy market. In short this will tighten up the rules on data transfer and US big data […]

U.S. Labour market   A further 262,649 job cuts in July were announced by U.S. employers yesterday reflecting more heat going out of the pre Covid U.S. employment market. This represents an increase of 54% over June’s figure and brings the total cuts year to date to 1.85 million. The record was set in 2001 […]

Soothsayer   In the last few weeks there has been a prominent voice siding with more radical interpretations of the status and path that the global economy is on. Claiming the beginning of the Dollar’s debasement, it is the voice of Goldman Sachs that now brings the market a stark warning about government debt and […]

Turkey: Short and Caught?   Being short of Turkish Lira will cost 1050% to borrow overnight in the offshore market as the local market has been drained following heavy state intervention executed through the state banks in the past week-probably more than $2.5 Billion taking the state $ sales to over $65 Billion. That Lira […]

Pitter Patter   On the more eclectic scale of renewable energy concepts was to harness the power of walking. By not having a completely fixed pathway, a pavement could rest upon dampers that could harness the kinetic energy of the pathway generated by people walking up and down the street. If you don’t think the […]

Mexico   Like other countries with huge diaspora working overseas such as the Philippines, the amount of remittances or funds from those workers that are sent home each month is keenly watched in Mexico City. Despite evidence that suggests that casual workers have seen their earnings crater in most countries during LockDown, for Mexico at […]

  China Politburo   China’s monetary policy will be more flexible and its fiscal policy more proactive in H2 2020. While a long way from embracing Western human rights values as we know, China is demonstrating that its economic approach is completely different today to how it was when the First 5 year Plan focussing […]

TRY again!   The Rand, Brazilian Real, the Ruble and the Indonesian Rupiah join the Turkish Lira to form a basket of emerging market currencies that are particularly vulnerable to capital flight – the so-called “fragile five”. During the height of the pandemic this basket of currencies recorded heavy losses versus their G10 counterparts. Losses […]

Grace Hopper 1907-1992   GH had a sparkling career stemming from an insatiable curiosity for knowledge as a child; she went on to enjoy a first class education at Vassar College followed by a PhD in mathematics at Yale University. Having extended her mathematics knowledge into a career in what became computer science, Grace Hopper […]

How low can you go?   With Euro-Dollar at two year highs, the rapid sell-off in the Dollar is in question. The trade weighted Dollar index is flashing oversold suggesting the broad-based USD sell off that has been underway since June could be running out of steam. A direct counter party to many fx trades […]

GBP: the Pound Between the Scylla of a weak USD and the Charybdis of a strong EUR   Last week GBP finished a whisker short of USD 1.28 and notched up its best week for some time versus USD. Against the EUR however it was a different story. EUR strong at EUR/USD 1.1650 which meant […]