SGM-FX insights

Is the Rand’s decline isolated?  The South African Rand’s sizeable decline over recent trading sessions has spooked markets. During the peak of the sell off, beginning on Tuesday of last week and lasting into Friday’s trading session, the decline in the Rand appeared to spill over into some other emerging markets. With USD/ZAR trading close […]

Chinese Pantomime Signals coming from the Chinese economy are creating dichotomous pictures when observed through the lens of market pricing versus analysts’ forecasts. Part of the reason for the cognitive dissonance that is clearly developing between observers of the Chinese economy is down to the fact that there are many competing forces vying for dominance […]

Loosing Loonie The Canadian Dollar continues to lose ground as investor appetite thins. As we know, Canada began its hiking cycle earlier than most developed-market central banks. Whilst most of the world’s major economies still had blinkers on, claiming that inflation would be transitory, the central Bank of Canada was busy preparing to tighten monetary […]

Pass Through The so-called pass through rate measures the sensitivity of a country’s inflation dynamics to changes in the value of its local currency. In truth, although the term is used to describe causality between currencies and the price level, the effect does run both ways with inflation impacting the exchange rate at the same […]

The same old problem The continuous evolution of and speculation over the peak of Federal Reserve interest rates has continued to wreak havoc upon emerging market currencies and assets. Due to the preeminence of the Federal Reserve, it can frequently be read as a proxy for global rates. As we have spoken about recently, the […]

A brave bet Late last year in late October, Luiz Lula da Silva claimed victory in a presidential election in Brazil. The election was close fought being won by less than two percentage points. The election saw Luiz Lula da Silva stage a comeback to defeat well-known Jair Bolsonaro, the at the time incumbent right-wing […]

Expensive Furniture At the time of writing at least, ANC leader and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has managed to hang onto power. When the President found himself at the centre of a South African political scandal, there was a lot of concern and risk surrounding the nation and its assets. International attention was cast […]

20th Party Congress   This week, considerable risks will flow into global markets from Asia. The epicentre of these risks will likely come from China as the ruling Communist Party holds its latest conference. China has played its role in global economic and foreign policy events over recent weeks and months. However, it’s role in […]

Rand   Volatility has been a feature of markets mid-2022 to date. Once the realisation finally struck that inflation was not transitory after all and the implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine became apparent assets that remained stable in value or price were few and far between. In a world characterised by such widespread inflation, […]

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 […]

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 […]

Chile   Not a frequent inclusion in the SGM-FX Daily Brief, Chile definitely deserves inclusion at this juncture in global macro events. Not just due to Russia but the world is making a dash towards sustainability, clean energy and non fossil fuel dependency. In order to do that non eco friendly activity will soar in […]