SGM-FX insights

A long shot: 1/2 The world, in particular, the Northern Atlantic in a number of words that leaves you with some probability of reading the final sentence: no pressure then. Financial markets and FX in particular all tend to boil down to rates: interest rates, inflation rates, rates of return etc. The financial universe is […]

Quarter End For those markets, including the UK, which will be observing Good Friday, today will be the last trading session of both March and Q1 2024. This means that we should expect today to mark the final day of any major FX position adjustment. The end of a month, quarter or year brings with […]

EU Border Controls 26,000 respondents in 18 jurisdictions have spoken and 51% of them are dissatisfied with border controls and the level of immigration into the EU. Now that is a statistic that political parties across the EU should sit up and take notice of in the next two months in the lead up to […]

A 1.08 floor? As we wrote yesterday, a surprise interest rate cut in Switzerland from the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has jolted markets into life. Over the last month, the probability of interest rate cuts at major central banks has been falling consistently. This surprise cut from the SNB last week has awoken investors to […]

UK Trade Deals While there have been deals signed with Australia in 2021 and New Zealand in 2022, the past post Brexit years in respect of trade deals have been more about which deals have not been agreed that should have been rather than those that did get signed: Canada due to the UK refusing […]

Flimsy Overnight there has been a significant repricing in the US Dollar. Major Dollar crosses are exhibiting significant Dollar weakness as a result of the market’s interpretation of the Federal Reserve’s decision yesterday evening. Most of the headlines from the FOMC decision would leave you scratching your head to reconcile the meeting with the overnight […]

UK Infrastructure British electricity demand is expected to rise by 64% in the next 10 years and could double by 2050. This increase is in large part down to ambitious decarbonisation targets which result in a shift towards transport and heating for example being almost completely powered by electricity. The deadline for decarbonisation is 2035 […]

Stealth Whilst it may soon be ending, the latest economic paradigm that has endured globally has been one of high inflation and economies have been virtually defined by respective central banks’ race to adjust interest rates. Rates are now widely expected to fall later this year, but until they do I conjecture we are still […]

US Inflation So what? you might justifiably wonder at February US Inflation coming in at 3.2% versus the expected 3.1%. However such is the febrile state of the market psychology at present where every pundit and his/her dog are sifting through the auspices to work out when the Federal Reserve will cut US interest rates, […]

A tale of two cities In NYC office vacancies stand at 20% whereas in London it is 10%. The US commercial real estate market is set to get worse in the next 2 years and already c$660 billion in value has been destroyed between 2019 and 2022. It is estimated that up to 44% of […]

International Women’s Day Today we wish all our readers a Happy International Women’s Day which has become a thing over the years and is now BIG and something that we are marking at SGM-FX!GBP/USD 1.2765. Prosperity, Security and Democracy Those according to European People’s Party leader Ursula Von Der Leyen are the 500 million population’s […]

China At this week’s National People’s Congress, the 2024 economic targets for the People’s Republic of China were announced. Last year GDP growth officially came in at 5.2% but outside China estimates put it at 1-2%; however while it was acknowledged this week that there had been some issues with the Chinese economy in 2023, […]