Daily Brief – British Pound

Humphrey Percy
Chairman and Founder
Fri 19 Jul 2024

British Pound

With weekly earnings coming out at up 5.7% in the 3 months to the end of May compared to the same period a year earlier which is a key indicator for inflation and closely watched by the Bank of England, the feeling in the market yesterday was that the likelihood of a rate cut in early August was slipping away. Some of GBP’s recent strength has been due to USD weakness but this time with USD broadly steady, it was due to domestic pressures that GBP was marked down.

GBP/USD 1.2980

Popular French Names

In France in 2023 the four most popular names for girls were Louise, Ambre, Alba and Jade. But when it comes to boys it is Gabriel, Raphael, Leo and Louis. It may be 235 years since the French Revolution and the beheading of King Louis XVl and his wife Marie Antoinette 4 years afterwards, but Louis and Louise remain up there in republican France.

EUR/JPY 170.86

UK Employment by numbers

9.4 million people in the UK are classed as economically inactive in the 3 months to end May. Of those 2.8 million are out of work due to long term illness. The headline unemployment rate though at its highest for 3 years at 4.4% does not sound historically concerning but it belies the 9.4 million economically inactive people who if they were to return to work would provide a shot in the arm to the productivity of UK plc. If. Meanwhile there are just under 900,000 vacancies that need to be filled.

GBP/EUR 1.1884

Die Null

In a sign of the times and the changing habits of German Generation Z when it comes to drinking, Munich, Germany is opening an alcohol free garden named Die Null or Zero in English. Beer sales fell by over 4% in 2023 which sounds less than in fact it is. The Munich City fathers having become sick of table tennis tables in the nearby Botanical Gardens being used by junkies for sleeping and by drug dealers for dealing, have dismantled them and are riding the zeitgeist by launching Die Null.

EUR/USD 1.0913

Total Request Live

Show host of MTV’s Total Request Live Carson Daly certainly earned his money this day in 2001 when guest Mariah Carey who being perhaps charitable(me not her) previous to going on had overdone things in the Green Room mumbled incoherently and appeared not to be in control of herself before performing a striptease in front of the audience.

Here is Heartbreaker from 1999:

Give me your love

You gotta bounce to it like this
You almost gotta walk to this
Uh-huh
Escape

Boy your love’s so good
I don’t want to let go
And although I should
I can’t leave you alone
‘Cause you’re so disarming
I’m caught up in the midst of you
And I can not resist, and oh

Boy if I do
The things you want me to
The way I used to do
Would you love me, baby
Or leave me feeling used?
Go and break my heart

Heartbreaker, you got the best of me
But I just keep on coming back incessantly
Oh why, did you have to run your game on me
I should have known right from the start
You’d go and break my heart

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

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