SGM-FX insights

EU and Venezuela In 2024, the EU exported EUR 800 million of goods to Venezuela and imported EUR 2.1 billion, giving a trade volume of EUR 2.9 billion. The exports are mainly made up of minerals, chemicals, and machine goods, and the imports are of course primarily oil. As for the main EU country doing […]

British Pound In case you missed the beginning of this month, GBP had a moment in the sun but has since slipped back. Without overthinking it, we have GDP figures on Thursday this week which will show how productive the UK is and Employment figures next week which will be the key indicator for whether […]

Tunbridge Wells Not so much angry as furious and demanding answers, Tunbridge Wells ground to a halt at the end of November when 24,000 householders were without water for 14 days due to South East Water’s Treatment plant in neighbouring Pembury operating in the mealy mouthed words of the company’s more than generously remunerated CEO, sub-optimally. Poor […]

Venezuela For the citizens of Venezuela, the last year has been a tale of ever-increasing economic hardship. Despite deposed President Maduro’s claim that growth has been at 9%, the counter to that is that inflation is estimated at 500%. Exactly a year ago it would have cost 52 Bolivars to buy USD 1. That same purchase […]

Bulgaria On Thursday last week Bulgaria formally adopted the Euro and for 6 months both EUR and the Lev will be legal tender in Bulgaria. In practice, Bulgaria already moved to the EUR in January 2025 when last week’s adoption was approved. Bulgaria, a country with 6.8 million people, is one of the EU’s poorest […]

Copper and FOMO Sometimes known as Dr Copper since the price of Copper reflects the health or otherwise of the global economy, a 38% increase in 2025 would normally be big news. But because that rise has been overshadowed when compared to the rises in Gold and Silver of 73% and 140% respectively, there is […]

Chinese Yuan Leaving aside the Frankincense and Myrrh, it is the relationship between the prices of Gold and Silver that are worth a further look at this point. In the past month, the ratio between 2026 could be the year that the Chinese Yuan becomes a world funding currency because of the ever-onward march of […]

Previous Metals Leaving aside the Frankincense and Myrrh, it is the relationship between the prices of Gold and Silver that are worth a further look at this point. In the past month, the ratio between Gold and Silver has moved from 80:1 to 64:1 or a 20% move. Some precious metal traders are claiming that […]

USA and the UK: 2 different tales Last week hedge fund tyro and super successful business builder Ken Griffin of Citadel gave a powerful interview on Bloomberg TV. One of his well-made points was that Europe needs to become more businesslike and encourage and applaud business. We took a look at the Top 50 World Companies: […]

European Job Vacancies Here’s a chart which made us sit up and reflect on how things differ across the larger European economies. Looking at job vacancies in 2020 at the time of the pandemic versus today, France and Germany have approximately 15% more jobs on offer whereas Spain has 53% more and Italy a stonking […]

Bank of England As expected, the Monetary Policy Committee delivered a 25bp rate cut to 3.75% yesterday lunchtime. This was what is being described as a hawkish cut which means that further reductions are less predictable in a mixed economic environment which has the curate’s egg attributes of rising unemployment and falling inflation. The Committee […]

Eurozone Growth Those productive Germans have for the second month been less productive it turns out in December which was a surprise to the pointy heads deputed to monitor EU stats. The story is as follows: the German services sector remains relatively resilient but manufacturing output has declined. At present the French economy is doing the […]