SGM-FX insights

A Fork in The Road? Well that was UK PM SirKeir’s “rallying” cry to the UK electorate: it’s me or Reform. Hmm. In a bit of a mixed day for the UK government with some poor Q2 UK economic growth figures at 0.3% after a better Q1 at 0.7%. Then keynote speeches from the UK […]

UK Gilt Yields Why is the cost of Government borrowing and thus consumer debt higher in the UK than in Europe? Fear not, this is not a Chancellor Reeves political rant, although the markets are yet to be convinced 15 months in that she has mastered her brief; rather it is the following: persistently high inflation […]

EU Chamber of Commerce China Chamber Supremo Jens Eskelund gave a speech this week which made it all too apparent that China is directing its trade exports away from tariff heavy USA to tariff light EU. At the same time, China is making it much harder for foreign businesses to operate in China. That imbalance […]

Centre for Policies Studies This UK think tank has had a good amount of egg on its corporate visage this week due to leader of Reform Nigel Farage using one of the CPFS’ own statistics when he made a speech saying that GBP234 billion could be saved by excluding migrants from benefits. As emotive and […]

iPhone 17 In the last few days there have been quite a few posts about how many days work it takes to earn enough to buy an iPhone17 across the countries of the world with the subtext that life is just not fair. Broadly, Western Europe is quickest and Africa is longest. Rather than dwell on […]

UK Quantitative Tightening It’s hard enough making tough calls on whether to stick to a GBP100 billion bond selling program or not when debating with fellow members of the Monetary Policy Committee, but for Governor Bailey things have got a lot trickier with not 1 but no less than 4 ex MPC members calling for […]

British Pound Despite the efforts of the press to write the story that UK PM SirKeir is on his last legs, Sterling on a 2 month high is unruffled so is not taking that story seriously. Damning with the headline “Lack of Replacement Options Keeps Starmer Safe-For Now” was Bloomberg yesterday which is not exactly […]

UK Growth Normally when UK Government figures come in exactly in line with forecasts it is a matter for self congratulation among economists and last week’s July Growth figures were no exception: the expectation was for Zero growth and indeed growth for the UK economy in July was Zero. There is a snag here: apart […]

France Beyond its political woes, which were somewhat mitigated by the appointment of President Macron’s latest PM on Wednesday, France is looking down the barrel of a likely credit downgrade that will see it losing its AA status. This will further constrain growth as well as increase its cost of borrowing. Just to round things […]

O Canada With much of the world’s North American focus on the USA rather than Canada, it is worth taking a look at what has been happening in the past few months in Canada. Government initiatives have been directed towards mitigating the effects of the US tariffs including new strategic response funds and extra loan […]

Independent Central Banks To continue the recent debate about how worried we should be (very) about the loss of independence of the USA’s Federal Reserve, the respected ex Deutsche Bank and HSBC Financial Times columnist Stuart Kirk, posited at the weekend that the answer should be, not very worried at all. SK arrived at this […]

US Rate Cuts The markets are understandably fixated on the US jobs report which comes out this afternoon given the Federal Reserve’s laser like focus on employment. On Wednesday data reflected that July Job Vacancies fell to a 10 month low. There is now a 100% chance priced in for a September US rate cut and […]