SGM-FX insights

German Election This weekend will almost certainly see a reduction in the Green Party’s share of the vote in the elections on Sunday. In 2021 the Greens captured 14.7% of the pie with ecological issues and specifically climate change and clean energy being high up the list of voter pre-occupations. Scroll forward four years and […]

Dollar Correction – Here to Stay? Yesterday marked President’s Day in the United States of America. The bank holiday and the lighter trading volumes that were observed did not lead to any significant volatility. Instead, lighter volumes allowed recent ranges in USD to solidify. Ahead of the bank holiday and into the end of last […]

Japan Up by 47% in 2024 from 2023 the number of tourists visiting Japan has rocketed due to its favourable exchange rate. It seems unlikely but now Japan is becoming concerned about the sort of over tourism that has plagued European destinations such as Venice, Paris and Amsterdam. Meanwhile Japan is enjoying the economic windfall […]

British Pound Instead of a 0.1% contraction in growth the UK economy managed a 0.1% growth in Q4 2024. And that was enough to send the British Pound sharply up yesterday. Maybe it was or maybe the credit should go to the Daily Telegraph which carried a bullish article which can be summarised as cheer […]

Monetary Policy Vs Foreign Policy Watchers of the US Dollar may be nursing a little whiplash after yesterday’s afternoon session. CPI despite not being the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation commanded significant attention. Headline inflation month on month rose 0.5% versus a forecast of 0.3%. Core CPI came in closer to forecast once the positive […]

Parallel Universe This time what seemed to be such a parallel universe was yesterday’s meeting between USA VP JD Vance and EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen following the USA sticking penal tariffs on EU aluminium and steel. UVL retaliated with “We should look with optimism at our transatlantic relations” but then remembered to say […]

Super Bowl Tariffs Donald Trump became the first sitting President to attend the Super Bowl this weekend. He received media attention and applause from the crowd as the camera panned to him. That wasn’t the only surprise the President provided this weekend. As tariff season progresses, the President turned his sight to the key industries […]

Great British Pound After a lacklustre reaction to the UK interest rate cut on Thursday and a more visceral one to the much less rosy Bank of England economic forecasts, GBP staged a recovery at the end of the week. However over the weekend a series of less than optimistic commentary on the BoE, the […]

Bank of England As expected the BoE cut interest rates by 25bps yesterday. So far so good but then the BoE departed from the script. Flat economic growth up until the end of 2024 was less of a surprise but then a new forecast for inflation +3.7% and 2025 economic growth slashed from 1.5% to […]

Not another headline Markets have either grown complacent or are reading beyond Trump’s headline statements. Over the past week markets have been presented with the challenge of fresh tariffs on China with retaliatory tariffs on the US also due to come into force in just under a week. In addition to that they have the […]

German Election With just 18 days to go to the German election, tensions are building. The centre right CDU whose leader Friedrich Merz is likely to be the next Chancellor is under fire for proposing a tougher immigration policy. That says his critics is similar to the far right AFD and verboten given the antipathy […]

Time to get a Thesaurus Removing tariffs just as quickly as President Trump thought to impose them is surely removing any elegance associated with Trump’s ‘favourite word in the dictionary’. On second thoughts, there likely never was any. In the two weeks that have passed since the President’s inauguration the tariff story goes something like […]