SGM-FX insights

UK   Plenty of pundits talking about new PM Liz Truss needing to stamp her authority in the first 100 days which includes the Conservative Party Conference, the UK energy cap review on 1-10-22 and increased clamour on striking workers, inflation and cost of living as the country goes into winter. Those historians among our […]

Changeover   It was confirmed yesterday that Liz Truss would be the new Tory party leader and therefore Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In the end the outcome of the ballot of Conservative party members was closer than might have been expected. Rishi Sunak, Truss’ ultimate hustings challenger, achieved some ten thousand more votes […]

Labor Day   With US markets closed for the Labor Day holiday which was first celebrated 130 years ago targeted to get safer working conditions and fairer wages for US workers, apart from being an opportunity for markets to catch their breath after a frenetic few weeks/months, it marks the start of the key period […]

South Africa   The Wild Coast in South Africa is in the Eastern Cape and extends 250kms from the border of KwaZulu-Natal in the North to East London in the South. A long and hard fought court battle between environmentalists and Shell has just concluded yesterday with Shell having their oil exploration license to drill […]

The countdown is on   Markets continued to tread a volatile path yesterday. Sterling in particular succumbed to the volatility and pessimism in the wider market incurring further loses versus the Dollar and notably the Euro yesterday. Despite the decline in Sterling, headline UK stock indices that typically exhibit a strong negative correlation with the […]

Germany   With the increasingly uncomfortable news for Germany that German inflation is running at almost a 50 year high at 8.8%, it is becoming clear that calls for a modest rise in Euro interest rates in September are not going to cut it for the more hawkish Northern European members of the ECB who […]

There’s tightening and there’s quantitative tightening   Pre-2008 financial crisis quantitative easing (QE) wasn’t a particularly familiar tool, nor was it particularly common knowledge outside the realm of central banking. However, when it became clear in the midst of the Great Recession that ever lower interest rates just weren’t going to cut it, quantitative easing […]

Full Employment   The textbook definition of full employment has an unemployment rate of 4.5%, so for Fed Chair Jerome Powell with US unemployment rate at a 50 year low of 3.5%, he will inevitably both say and signal things that will spoil the party spirit when he gets to his feet at 1500hrs London […]

The bleak mid-winter..   ..Might be about to get a little less bleak. The phases of threat and subsequent remedy have continued to play out in this rather troublesome past year. The threat of inflation, whilst written off as a passing phenomena, eventually received its antidote of monetary policy adjustment. So too now is the […]

Oil   Go back to the 1970’s and the fear was that oil would run out. In 1965 32 million barrels of oil were pumped every day. By 2018 that had risen to 95 million. In 1980 there was reported to be 684 billion barrels of oil still to be pumped out of the ground […]

Peak vs Post: the Atlantic divide   For the last few months markets have been decimated by volatility across most of the globe as authorities took aim at their mutual enemy: inflation. Whilst this has created hugely destructive dynamics across markets and still created winners and losers, there was at least one thing keeping some […]

Great British Pound   Was it because desk heads and trading bosses were on their summer holidays at the end of last week? No it was not: the UK is borrowing too much GBP 55 billion for the year 2022-2023 which is GBP 3 billion more than forecast. Retail sales are up 2.3% from pre […]