SGM-FX insights

EU Consumers While no one would pretend that the past week has been good for savers and investors, there is a glimmer of hope for EU consumers. The argument goes as follows: the EU exports EUR 500 billion of goods to the USA and imports EUR 350 billion. Conversely, the EU’s service sector is exactly […]

Weaker US Dollar As the dust settles and the tealeaves are sifted, the obvious early take is that POTUS has achieved an initial post tariff announcement reduction in the value of USD which he stated as his aim before he took office. An immediate jump in value of so called safe haven currencies Japanese Yen […]

US Trade War Tariffs With all markets awaiting what emanates from POTUS later today, Trump has certainly achieved one aim: getting the world’s collective attention. Increasingly desperate TV pundits have spent the past hours dragging past Trade Negotiators into the studio in an effort to get them to predict what the tariffs will look like. […]

De-Dollarization A shift away from the US Dollar with Central Bank Reserves denominated in US Dollars moving down from a high of just over 70% down to 60% in the past 20 years is note worthy but the speed of that decline makes it less striking. However there are 3 factors that are changing the […]

Pairs Trading Back in the days when I worked in Bermuda for a hedge fund, we were always seeking stocks that were overvalued and other stocks that were undervalued having analysed both sets of historical price behaviours. Normally those stocks were in the same industry but not necessarily in the same geographic region. In the […]

British Government Securities-Gilts Gilts are increasingly popular as a place for UK investors to park savings: the Interactive platform for example is seeing a 42% increase in gilt transactions and a 65% increase in gilt investments. Part of the reason is that in the first 6 months of 2025 no less than GBP 80 billion […]

Gold Another week and another high for Gold at $3045. It’s not just the fear factor that leads investors to buy Gold, it’s the Central Bank buying in a bid to diversify away from USD. In the past 3 years, that buying has amounted to over 1000 tons led by China and India, but also other […]

Uncertainty and GBP This is the word that dominates market thinking at present. No surprise that like the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England left UK interest rates unchanged with that uncertainty overshadowing all markets plus the expectation of UK inflation rising from its current 3% rather than falling to the target of 2%. […]

OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development slashed their forecast for 2025 EU growth this week from 1.3% to 1.0%. Germany with slated growth of just 0.4% down from 0.7% was described with a rare touch of OECD humour as the weakest link. While better described as the prime culprit, the effect of flaccid […]

US Dollar Uncertainty in the USA caused by a consequential cocktail of on off on tariffs, inflation concerns, derailed interest rate policy, federal spending and higher taxes is outweighing the safe haven status of the Dollar. In more normal times, the Ukraine ceasefire brinkmanship between Russia and the USA would drive up the USD. Instead, […]

Porsche Yet another auto company with falling sales. Only in the case of Porsche, its sales have fallen only 1% in 2024 on the previous year. However margins have fallen considerably with gross operating profit down from EUR 7.3 billion in 2023 to EUR 5.3 billion in 2024. This is enough of a wake up […]

US Recession In the past year the USA and indeed the whole world has been watching and hoping that the Federal reserve will succeed in bringing down inflation without causing a recession. That is the Goldilocks scenario which is described as a soft landing. Looking at the S&P 500 which has declined 7% since January […]