SGM-FX insights

Claridy   Yesterday afternoon saw EURUSD kick into life. Initially, with US Treasuries still continuing to be bought in droves, demand for the US Dollar was weak. The market had a key technical level of 1.19 in its sights and rode towards it throughout the morning session. A weak private employment report (US ADP data) […]

Scale   The Federal Reserve has been in its blackout period ahead of its latest monetary policy decision this week. No doubt many Fed Presidents are itching to head towards the microphone once Powell’s Reserve publishes its latest policy decision. The bond market has been flashing warning signals as we have covered with fair value […]

Loonie?   Amidst signs of rising inflationary pressures and a strong recovery in underlying economic activity, Canada joined the early recovery club early on. With strong fundamentals of its own and the expectations of a spillover from its outperforming neighbour, the United States, the Bank/Banque signalled its intent to normalise policy ahead of many of […]

Hot Air   A change of tide has begun in the foreign exchange market. However, it is not one that will float all ships. Finally, an acknowledgement of rising inflation expectations in the United States and globally has coerced the Federal Reserve to begin the path towards a discussion about tapering rates it seems. Their […]

Norway   Norway’s Norges Bank is setting the pace for the world’s Central Banks by announcing yesterday that they plan to raise rates 4 times in the next year. Currently the key rate for Norway is at 0.00% but the indication is for 4 rate increases of 0.25% each quarter over the next 12 months […]

US Labour Market Bottleneck   Why was the US jobs market weaker in April than expected and likely to remain so? With 7.5 million more people out of work than a year ago, the US is looking for answers as to why people are not getting back to work. The answers are likely to be: […]

Sell-off, Sell-on   Yesterday markets were perhaps as non-directional as they have been in a long time. Usually, the set of expectations moving into an important event or data release is well defined and it’s possible to place your finger on exactly how the market should react to certain tangible outcomes from such events. The […]

Cheese   Before I get to the astronomical rally in cheese futures that I know you have been eagerly awaiting, let’s take a look at what the Federal Reserve said last night in one of its most defining monetary policy meetings in a decade. As we discussed recently, the market knows that global central banks […]

Corporate USA   Yesterday POTUS, Joe Biden announced an increase in the minimum hourly wage for federal contractors from $10.95 to $15, an increase of almost 37%. Corporate USA is under no illusions that this will feed through to the bottom lines of non federal corporations. The categories of federal workers that this will apply […]

Tightrope   The three phase pandemic from an FX and rates perspective goes as follows: Tantrum, Blinkers and Tapering. The blinkers are still on the international market and still subduing volatility in the foreign exchange market, but yesterday we got a real taste of what tapering looks like and therefore what is in store for […]

Hey Ho up she rises   Carrying 18,300 containers, the cost of the stranded Ever Given vessel in the Suez Canal was costly for its operators, Taiwanese Evergreen, the privately operated canal, global trade, and me. Perhaps my IKEA package that spent nearly a week of it’s pre-delivery life on that boat stranded just outside […]

More stimulus?!   When you look at the inflation concerns that have been developing in the US economy as a result of Biden’s €1.9tn stimulus package you may have thought it would be madness to start planning yet another round of $3tn worth of stimulus. After all, if people thought that the existing package risked […]