SGM-FX insights

Bank of England To absolutely no-one’s surprise the Bank of England left rates as they were yesterday at 5.25% and Governor Bailey said they needed more data before cutting rates. Critics of the UK Monetary Policy setting unit will soon be accusing the Bank of being too slow to raise rates when inflation took off […]

Hat trick + 1 Yesterday’s was the fourth straight Federal Reserve meeting that has seen the FOMC hold rates at highly restrictive levels. Since the hiking cycle concluded last year, market attention has inevitably focussed upon how rates may be normalised from here. The job of the Fed has been to sustain health interest rate […]

Eurozone At the beginning of 2023 the ECB forecast was for the Eurozone to grow by 0.5%: hardly earth shaking but in the circumstances following the interest rate rises and the rocketing energy costs in 2022 and not at all to overlook the war in Ukraine, understandable. With no sense of schadenfreude -or the enjoyment […]

Stock check I know, I know. The new year celebrations are still so close in the rear-view mirror how could a whole month have possibly passed? Well, it almost has, and the passing of month end tomorrow will also bring with it new forces into the market. As far as seasonal effects are concerned, January […]

US Treasury Bonds With $34 trillion of debt the US Government has to run fast to keep up as it keeps increasing given the cost of re-financing the debt.  This week the US has auctioned $61 billion of 5 year debt and $ 60 billion of 2 year debt. In April the USA is looking […]

ECB President As predicted, Mme Lagarde, President Christine Lagarde yesterday stuck to her existing line that it was all much too early to talk about interest rate cuts in the Eurozone. The market or rather 60% of those polled are holding out for the first such rate cut occurring in April. Maybe that 60% should […]

Question Without wanting to sound alarmist the question is whether markets have factored in the geo political risks present due to the conflicts in Eastern Europe and the twin conflicts in the Middle East which are overlaid by the vast number of general elections scheduled for 2024. Maybe a better way to express the question is […]

Flavour of the week The summit taking place in Davos brings with it a huge opportunity for leaders of companies and industry to speak with the press. Whilst the World Economic Forum is billed as a venue where titans of industry come together to get business done, it often seems more like a hunting ground […]

US Economy The greatest risks to the US economy in 2024 at least according to 1200 US business leaders polled last week are in order as follows: Recession, Inflation and Interest Rates. Nothing unexpected there. However tacked on to the end was the fourth greatest risk at least to domestic US corporate chiefs, although outside […]

Does Iowa affect the Dollar? By Iowa I of course mean the events in the Republican nomination race that have dominated business, political and financial news flows overnight. The polls and pundits had far from ruled out Trump as the Republican candidate for the race to the White House. However, the margin by which Trump […]

Shanghai Containerised Freight Index Instinctively one would expect that freight costs have increased and probably quite a lot since October 7 and the outset of the war in Israel. With Friday’s sharp rise in the SCFI due to the US/UK actions against the Houthis, the Index stands at $3100. That translates as the cost of shipping […]

US Inflation In the end the much anticipated December US inflation figure yesterday came in at 3.4% versus the 3.2% expected and the November 3.1%. While that may not look like much of a difference, it is a signal that is unwelcome in the market especially when core inflation is only just below 4% at […]