Daily Brief – The Art of the Deal

The Art of the Deal

Today the UK Prime Minister will be announcing the fruits of his weekend labours after meeting the EU not as an accredited delegate but in a side session on the fringes of the EU Summit in Albania. What was on the table? Youth mobility, which is pol speak for 24-30 year old Europeans coming for study and or work to the UK, plus fishing and, in this instance, once again EU fishermen being given access to UK fishing grounds. If that does not sound too appealing to the UK electorate, PM Starmer is furiously spinning the positivity of the payback being the re-set of relations with the big boys and girls of the EU, who are rather keener on the mobility and fishing than rekindling relations with the UK. The real subtext, of course, is for PM Starmer to declare something/anything after the local election drubbing that he took two weeks ago.

EUR/USD 1.1163.

2025 Safe Havens

A weekend report suggesting that the 2025 safe havens in these turbulent times are Gold and Bitcoin. Bitcoin? The logic for Gold is hard to disagree with once one has overcome the lack of income on the investment and the continuous and steep increase in the value of gold over the past 18 months to its current USD 3237. The logic for Bitcoin apart from the fact that it has recently been rehabilitated due to the avowed enthusiasm for all things crypto by the new US Administration, is that Bitcoin is now tracking gold. An alternative explanation is that Bitcoin is tracking gold because there is insufficient new demand to drive the price upwards. Whatever the answer to that one, Gold, Swiss Francs and Japanese Yen may be more traditional but are more reliable boyfriends.

GBP/USD 1.3285.

EU v USA

In a move distinctly at odds with the prevailing mood in Washington where POTUS delights in including the media in his Cabinet Meetings, ECB Chief Economist Philip Lane made a couple of well judged points at the end of last week that may well have been missed: firstly, he queried whether there was value in publishing possible economic scenarios other than a single economic forecast for the EU; secondly, he counseled debating economic behind closed doors before going public. Quite a refreshing change from the policy on the hoof then changing it spirit endemic today in the USA.

EUR/JPY 162.64.

Miaeow

Interesting job advert if you are a cat lover and can spare up to 40 hours a week and want to be paid GBP65-100 an hour for cat sitting. Other duties in addition to acting as cat companion include light grooming and feeding. London company Aviamarket has already received 250 applications. In the past unusual job adverts have included being a seagull scarcer at Blackpool Zoo, which involved dressing up as a bird; then further afield last year the Tasmanian Tourist Board advertised jobs that included a Wallaby Walker and a Paranormal Investigator. That’s Tasmania: different.

EUR/GBP 0.8405.

Breakfast in America

This album by British supergroup Supertramp was released to much acclaim back in 1979 on this day and then spent 6 weeks at the top of the charts buoyed up by a host of hits. This one struck a chord in those far off days of innocence in the last millenium before logic went out of the window: The Logical Song:

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily
Oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me

But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible, practical
And then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical

There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am

I said, watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical
A liberal, oh fanatical, criminal
Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re acceptable
Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable!
Oh take it, take it, take it, yeah

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

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