SGM-FX insights

Management Guru: Andy Grove-the”guru’s guru” and his book, High Output Management   Andy Grove who departed this world in 2016 had many choice quotes, but those who knew him as CEO of Intel would not be surprised to learn that Dominic Cummings, the UK Prime Minister’s Chief Adviser has embraced his book and set it […]

Medupi   Taking to Twitter in his weekly Presidential address, Cyril Ramaphosa discussed the tale of grandeur and shortcomings that has engulfed South Africa’s newest and largest power stations. The President went on to criticise the building of Medupi power station and its twin Kusile, a project which Zuma’s successor blames for much of the […]

Global Economic Growth   Always useful at this time of year for export led businesses to look beyond forecasted growth rates for one’s own country or region. For those finalising their budgets for 2020 and 2021 global economic growth is forecast to be 2.9% for both years before clawing its way back to 3% in […]

UK: The Employment Picture   32.75 million in work, vacancies at a low of 800K, unemployment down by 23K to 1.31M. The statistic most closely watched by SMEs in this very positive employment picture is that of average earnings which slowed in October to an annual rise of 3.6% down from 3.8%. Nervous at the […]

Well that’s all right then!   My sincere thanks to European leaders for appointing me as President of the European Central Bank from 1 November 2019. It is an honour to succeed Mario Draghi. I am looking forward to working with the ECB’s talented staff to keep euro area prices stable and banks safe.   […]

Polish Preferment   All those British who took out Swiss Franc mortgages 20 years ago and then found that while they enjoyed much lower interest rates: they ended up repaying far more as GBP depreciated against the Swiss Franc and can only look on at yesterday’s European Court of Justice, Europe’s top court ruling with […]

  Don’t just book it: Thomas Cook it….   Will have a new meaning for the 600,000 customers abroad as at last night of which approximately one third are British and need to be repatriated. The venerable company founded in 1841 has no national significance so will not be saved by the UK Government. Chinese […]

Rate cuts in the Mexico and US and the whiff of a Canadian political cover up   Following Mexico’s rate cut last night in an attempt to inject life into its flagging economy, it looks as if the market is increasingly pencilling in two further cuts by the Federal Reserve this year: in September and […]

Gold versus Silver   With gold having run up to over $1400 an ounce, market sages are dusting off their files and looking at the Gold to Silver ratio. At present that stands at 92.4 which means that gold is 92.4 times as expensive as silver. The thinking goes that rather than buy gold which […]

Jeremy Corbyn-the Harry Houdini of UK politics(maybe)   After weeks of prevarication  despite intense pressure from his MPs, the Leader of HM’s opposition has said that there should be a further Referendum on the EU and at that time, Labour will campaign for the UK to remain in the EU. Brilliant! There is either zero […]

End of Quite a Week   With this weekend’s G20 meeting there really is so much that could go right -or wrong- and markets are rightly fixated on signals regarding USA-China trade talks; European economics; British politics; Gulf tensions and in particular the potential for Iran to abandon the nuclear agreement plus last but not […]

Group of 20     How many sets of eyes and ears do you really need in order to react quickly to the set of discussions taking place in Osaka, Japan this Friday? A minimum for 10 pairs, assuming each leader has a conversation with at least one other person and doesn’t have a solitary […]