A public holiday today Stateside provides welcome relieft for the Greenback. The USD has been confirmed as the worst performing G10 currency in the first 6 months of the year according to Rabobank and is threatening to continue its poor performance into the back end of 2017.
Prima facie, one may place the blame on the Dollar decline solely with President Trump however looking at the hard data the economy simply hasn’t picked up as much as intially expected.
Central to this is the now increased market scepticism as to weather the Fed willl be able to announce a third rate hike by the end of the year.
Reversal out of long USD positions is also a function of an improvement in European fundamentals [i.e. political risk] which have driven money back accross the Atlantic. This has seen EUR trade to its highest since May 2016 against the Dollar and is predicted to end the year at 1.1700.
UK Housing Market Best performance in the past two years etc etc with the Halifax average house price up 4.8% as at the end of November. Without being curmudgeonly or seasonally Scroogelike the real house price performance allowing for inflation in the last 2 years is minus 10.5% for all those mistakenly regarding their house […]
EU Stagflation With inflation blipping up and business activity turning down, the S word is back on the table. Not only manufacturing but also the services sector fell sharply in November with the Purchasing Managers Index at its lowest level this year. The EUR facing a rampant Dollar is increasingly undermined by its own weakening […]
UK Equities We wrote recently about a European wide Santa Rally in Equities despite the political headwinds in Continental Europe, but it looks as if the UK market has finally managed to break out on the top side of its range and without wishing to jinx it, may be set fair. One well known Fund […]