SGM-FX insights

Deep and sharp   Alarm bells are still ringing. Households are on lockdown. Authorities are seemingly powerless to overcome the Coronavirus pandemic. Yesterday the Fed’s almost unprecedented 1% weekend cut in the target rate and a $700bn ramp up in quantitative easing failed to placate markets. If you’re not sure what that means it’s the […]

Unprecedented Action   Last night’s Federal Reserve action underlined the commitment of global monetary authorities’ to tackle the economic fallout from the virus. The Currency Market is opening steady from the move late on Friday night which no doubt lay behind the weekend decision. GBP a cent stronger versus USD but still sharply lower than […]

Aussie Rules   F1 fans expected this weekend’s opening race in Melbourne to be officially postponed despite F1 fiercely resisting it given the costs of staging each race and the tight timetable between races in different countries. It all requires detailed and flawless planning and execution to move the F1 circus every week during the […]

Bears   Last night’s price action was tumultuous. Asian and US trading sessions are normally characterised by widespread, sluggish price moves and limited volume. It’s unsurprising given that some 80% of foreign exchange sales and trading takes place in Europe and the lion’s share of that in London. However, when serious geopolitical or economic events […]

Exactly One Month to the end of the Tax Year   Those seeking to plan their personal and corporate affairs as they traditionally do each March are faced with more challenges than usual. Here in the UK, there is new government with a sufficiently large majority to push through more controversial positive and negative measures […]

How to cure Coronavirus   Taking lead from the US House of Representatives, Italy, China, and now the IMF, apparently the cure to Coronavirus is to print a ton of money. In fact, more; much more! Ten tons of $100 bills is worth approximately a billion dollars. That means the IMF’s pledge of $50bn for […]

Markets Maelstrom   News early on in the day yesterday that Central Banks were ready to inject a stimulus by way of more liquidity and to create still easier monetary conditions to combat the economic effects of Coronavirus cheered stock and oil markets further. Then statements from the G7 in the morning and the pre-emptive […]

Loose footing   Equity markets have been a good barometer of the risk associated with the Coronavirus. Thanks to numerous developed markets and indices being ‘late-cycle’ they are proving to be particularly sensitive to exogenous risk; more valuable in my opinion than many purpose-built indices. In the UK yesterday, the FTSE100 kicked off to a […]

Markets: Enough already?   Last week the FTSE fell 823 points or 11.1% in line with other global stock markets which collectively saw $6 Trillion wiped off stocks. Oil is now just $50.60. Here in the UK c8000 people have been tested for Coronavirus and all but about 35 have tested negative. Globally the mortality […]

UK House Sellers   For those readers who remember the 1980’s, you will recall that the most loathed symbol of Young Urban Professionals or Yuppies was the estate agent who zipped around in a flash (red) company motor with a mobile phone the size of a brick clamped to his ear. With the advent of […]

Cool, but how?   If you want the simplest of summaries to yesterday’s budget speech in South Africa then read no further than the title. Tito Mboweni mostly said the right things as he laid the budget before the nation yesterday. The one thing he missed out was how!? What the review promised was more parsimonious […]

Shrove Tuesday yesterday which means today is Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent   For the next 40 days until Easter Sunday, many will be observing some form of abstinence regime out of either religious or another conviction. Some SGM-FX team members are vying with each other to give up something: Charles(smoking) Euan(alcohol) and […]