SGM-FX insights

Hospitality Sector   In July this year UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak came up with a novel way to get diners to return to cafes and restaurants with his Eat Out to Help Out Scheme. But as time goes on, restaurants are needing to become more inventive and this week the winner (so far) has been […]

Tin   As demand for electronic goods slumped at the beginning of LockDown, tin fell to $12,700 in March. The bulk of tin – more than half-is used as solder in electronic products to connect components. By the beginning of this month, tin had risen to over $18,000 but having now slid back to $17,500 […]

Double Digits   Hold onto your hats, there’s only 99 more days of 2020. For many, this year has been one they wish they could forget. For many of those, however, it will be the year they cannot. But will 2021 provide greener grass? Johnson’s admonition to the public that new Coronavirus measures could be […]

US Dollar   Two weeks ago the teenage scribblers as Nigel Lawson referred to market analysts when he was UK Chancellor, had written the USD off and were writing its obituary as the world’s store of value and leading reserve currency. With the USD almost 3% stronger against EUR now, those same analysts are a […]

It is what it is   Yesterday, as virus fears closed in on London’s financial markets the value of the Pound Sterling, as well as UK equities, has stumbled. The sell-off in London’s FTSE 100 was echoed on Wall Street with major US indices closing in the red. Commodity prices also took a step lower […]

Botswana   You don’t need Alistair Mcall Smith’s Number One Ladies Detective Agency to figure out this one….   Home to the Jwneng open cast diamond mine, the world’s richest, Botswana is looking beyond diamond mining as to how it will support its population of 2.3 million once diamonds are exhausted-production is already down-production of […]

Italy   The EU Recovery Fund is a colossal EUR 750 Billion or USD 890 Million and a good slug-probably EUR 290 Million or USD 340 Million- is destined for Italy as being one of the hardest hit economies by Covid. The Italian optimists are excited at the prospect of spending on the crumbling transport […]

Don’t hold your breath   The scenario in which the Federal Reserve Bank in the United States forecasts no interest rate hikes for the best part of half a decade and the market interprets that as mildly hawkish and buys the US Dollar might seem fairly alien. It might seem so because it is! Overnight […]

Recession Asian Style   The Asian Development Bank has announced that for the first time in 60 years the 45 nation region will enter a recession and its economies will contract by 0.7% this year. The West can only look on with envy especially given that the ADB has also announced that Asia will rebound […]

Cost of caution   One of the most strict lockdowns imposed worldwide was in the nation of South Africa. The nation’s projected capacity to deal with a coronavirus outbreak lead to immediate and severe lockdown only days after the first coronavirus cases were first imported to the continent of Africa. A five-tier lockdown schedule was […]

OPEC   Today is OPEC’s 60th birthday and on this day in 1960 it was founded in Baghdad, Iraq with 5 members. Today headquartered in Vienna since 1965, there are 15 members and the alliance is no less fractious than it was in its youth. WTI at the end of last week stood at $37 […]

Delphic words from ECB President Lagarde   For someone who espouses clear communication, Christine Lagarde gave a masterclass in opacity on the future path of the EUR exchange rate yesterday at the ECB press conference. Markets cautiously pushed EUR higher while CL was speaking to give the ECB the message that they would continue to […]