SGM-FX insights

Japan Up by 47% in 2024 from 2023 the number of tourists visiting Japan has rocketed due to its favourable exchange rate. It seems unlikely but now Japan is becoming concerned about the sort of over tourism that has plagued European destinations such as Venice, Paris and Amsterdam. Meanwhile Japan is enjoying the economic windfall […]

British Pound Instead of a 0.1% contraction in growth the UK economy managed a 0.1% growth in Q4 2024. And that was enough to send the British Pound sharply up yesterday. Maybe it was or maybe the credit should go to the Daily Telegraph which carried a bullish article which can be summarised as cheer […]

Parallel Universe This time what seemed to be such a parallel universe was yesterday’s meeting between USA VP JD Vance and EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen following the USA sticking penal tariffs on EU aluminium and steel. UVL retaliated with “We should look with optimism at our transatlantic relations” but then remembered to say […]

Great British Pound After a lacklustre reaction to the UK interest rate cut on Thursday and a more visceral one to the much less rosy Bank of England economic forecasts, GBP staged a recovery at the end of the week. However over the weekend a series of less than optimistic commentary on the BoE, the […]

Bank of England As expected the BoE cut interest rates by 25bps yesterday. So far so good but then the BoE departed from the script. Flat economic growth up until the end of 2024 was less of a surprise but then a new forecast for inflation +3.7% and 2025 economic growth slashed from 1.5% to […]

German Election With just 18 days to go to the German election, tensions are building. The centre right CDU whose leader Friedrich Merz is likely to be the next Chancellor is under fire for proposing a tougher immigration policy. That says his critics is similar to the far right AFD and verboten given the antipathy […]

Harmful, Toxic, Biased and Insecure Well it took less than one week: after the excitement that met the DeepSeek AI application, came the fight back, the negative press and the correct questioning as to whether DeepSeek is safe. Well surprise surprise, it does not tolerate or even answer questions prejudicial to China but there are […]

Mission Driven ECB President Christine Lagarde faced some polite but firm questions in the post 25bp interest rate cut presser yesterday afternoon. Given that Germany, France and Ireland which are all on the EU naughty step have the worst Eurozone economic performances and Eurozone inflation is 2.4% or 4% for services inflation versus GDP growth […]

Competitiveness Compass In case it has passed you by, today is the day or Der Tag when the EU will publish its Competitiveness Compass. Before you reach for your Thesaurus to work out what the latest manifestation of the EU mangling the English language has in store for all of us, this is the twofold […]

Reform Britain’s newest party is now the top polling party at 26%, 1 point ahead of the Conservatives and 4 points ahead of Labour. This is big news and perhaps explains why even Conservatives with strong nerves are beginning to wonder if the fortunes of the Conservatives might best be joined with Reform rather than […]

UK Growth Further worries this weekend for UK Chancellor Reeves as it emerges that if her plans were based on up to date forecasts rather than UK official growth projections not only would her numbers not add up but the UK would be faced with a GBP 30 billion hole in the budget. While inflation […]

Germany In just 6 weeks Germany will vote and while Chancellor Scholz thinks that he can win, most others are equally convinced that he cannot based on his economic record alone that has seen the German economy contract by 0.3% in 2023 and by an estimated 0.2% in 2024. That on top of his ability […]