Commodities: Gold at $1318, WTI Oil at $59.83, Both up more than 1%
Currencies: GBP weaker following the PM writing to Eurozone applying for an extension yesterday. A rally in GBP only likely if the PM gets her deal through; right now with the PM’s late night speech, a NoDeal is back on the table as being a possibility and GBP reflects that. USD weaker.
Equities: FTSE 7291, Dow 25,745. Both down 0.5%.
I0 year Govt Yields: US 2.53, Germany 0.08, UK 1.16, France 0.46, Italy 2.53, Japan -0.04
Fed Chairman now sees NO rate rises in 2019 and Treasury yields fell to the lowest in the past year.
(But at a cost-see below) In case you missed this statistic: last Saturday was the EIGHTEENTH consecutive Saturday that Les Gilets Jaunes demonstrated in Paris marking this by burning down a restaurant, causing much damage by rioting in the Champs Elysees and not showing much sign of changing their plans for this coming Saturday. All this within a couple of hundred metres of the Elysees Palace, home to Le President himself, Emanuel Macron-surely just a little embarrassed by his ineffectualness to stem the hurt to the capital and its inhabitants? Still at least Eurostar is working….uh oh …..!
The 10 Most expensive Cities in the World
If you are an ex pat living in one of the world’s ten most expensive cities, you probably know how expensive your chosen city is already. Interesting though to see how those cities stack up. Here is the list and of course as with all statistics, when the list says the top 10, there are of course 11!
1= Singapore, Paris, Hong Kong
4= Zurich
5= Geneva, Osaka
7= Seoul, Copenhagen, New York
10= Tel Aviv, Los Angeles
Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder
Blinkers on The Federal Reserve published its latest interest rate decision last night. As widely expected, it made no change to current benchmark rates. The Fed funds rate therefore remains within a restrictive 4.25-4.5% target band. The Fed did make some marginal changes to its balance sheet operations, tweaking some caps on treasury redemptions. But […]
Where’s the Trump Put? On Tuesday Trump went some way towards remediating for his comments that appeared to show a disregard for a recession over the weekend. In a Fox News interview on Sunday the President declined to rule out the prospect of a recession, contributing to the stock market decline come Monday. For what […]
Looking ahead to BoE Thursday On Thursday the Bank of England will publish its second monetary policy decision of 2025. Casting our minds back momentarily to its last publication in February, we are reminded of the surprising shift in narrative from key MPC members. The shift in voting patterns saw one member, previously viewed by […]