SGM-FX insights

UK Pound   Given its travails in the past weeks, it is refreshing to be able to report that GBP had a better day yesterday and is now trading at GBP/USD 1.1320 and GBP/EUR 1.1570. This was on the back of markets sensing a government u turn on the mini budget statement of Friday 23-09-22 […]

Budget Count Down   The Chancellor has brought forward the date upon which he will announce his new budget plan. Now apparently taking a less devolved approach from his previous ‘markets will be markets’ sentiment, the change of date was justified to give some certainty with respect to fiscal policy during this period of turmoil. […]

UK Government Bond Market   The market is a GBP 2.1 Trillion government bond market and therefore significant enough to attract attention. Nevertheless it is a mature market overseen by the hugely respected Bank of England. Yesterday BoE buying of securities was extended to include Inflation Linked Bonds and this morning it is reported that […]

An interesting conditionality   The markets have been following the meteoric rise in USDJPY closely. It is perceived as one of the key currency pairs out there that provides a multitude of wider signals about respective financial conditions in addition to its primary function of measuring clearing prices between the two constituent currencies. As one […]

Canada   In the past few weeks, Canada has been partially overlooked given the domestic focus on the USA and the economic implications for the rest of the world. Canada in many ways is a study worth making: inflation as at August of 7% with core inflation of 5%, the Bank of Canada has raised […]

USA   Unemployment claims up 29,000 and higher than expected started the wobble which was then compounded by a Federal Reserve Governor stating that despite the labour market self evidently cooling, there was no prospect of there being a respite in the rate rising agenda. WTI oil at $88.24 due to the much larger cut […]

A return to energy   First the context of yesterday’s trading session: Thanks to some data in the United States showing a more robust backdrop than may have been expected, positions that existed across global markets speculating that the Federal Reserve would have to take its foot off the pedal became increasingly untenable. There was […]

Strong Dollar Consequences   Since the 2011 low, USD is up 40% versus a broad set of trading currencies. While this is mostly good for the USA, it is less so for the countries and regions of some of those other currencies. For example the EUR is suffering from a much weaker exchange rate at […]

This lady is for turning   Yesterday the government made a U-turn on some of the headline taxation policies announced during the mini budget late last month. The focus of the rollback was on the 45% additional taxation rate recently announced by the Chancellor to be on the chopping block from April next year. The […]

Markets Start to the Week   After the roiling bond markets last week we start the new week with 10 Year government bond yields as follows: US 3.82, Germany 2.12, Japan 0.24 and UK 4.08. Nymex WTI $79.70 and Gold $1659. EUR/USD 0.98. With OPEC+ mulling a cut in oil production of more than 1 […]

Oil   Hurricane Ian disrupting Gulf of Mexico output, economic expectations changing intraday, interest rate expectations equally volatile and for good measure a fourth gas leak in the Nordstream pipelines has been identified: yesterday in this land of new normal was just another day in the global oil market with NYMEX WTI now at $81.50. […]

Tug of War   There is a rather small but welcoming green just outside of the City Hall building on the South Bank of London, just west of Tower Bridge. Many people will frequent the green for the spectacular view of the Tower of London and the City of London on the far side of […]