SGM-FX insights

  For those of a delicate disposition: look away now!   The Daily Telegraph has polled a representative group of U.K. 16-24 year olds and has discovered: 28% have never heard of Stalin 50% have never heard of Lenin and 70% have never heard of Mao Tse Tung. With a General Election 22 days away […]

2 vs 3   The Pound this morning sits at 2 week highs versus the US Dollar and shows signs of returning to the 1.30 ceiling which it has established for itself lately. However, with little more than three weeks left until the General Election in the UK, the Pound will be vulnerable to political […]

Limewood Hotel, New Forest   News of the theft of 82 bottles of wine worth GBP67,000 last week. Presumably the insurance company will fork out for the replacement cost of these bottles at an average GBP 817 cost per bottle. Incidentally at a normal restaurant mark up of 3 times that equates to GBP 201,000 […]

Markets   Today’s close of business marks the half way mark for November and a plethora of news including the Fed Chairman stating that he does not expect a major setback in equity markets is giving all markets encouragement on the economic front. From a political perspective however it is a different story with markets […]

INR   They say that nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. Whilst far too gloomy for my bright and sanguine eyes, just how certain are these two certainties? In the case of India and particularly taxation, the predictability of these words, attributed to Founding Father of the United States Benjamin Franklin, are […]

UK: The Employment Picture   32.75 million in work, vacancies at a low of 800K, unemployment down by 23K to 1.31M. The statistic most closely watched by SMEs in this very positive employment picture is that of average earnings which slowed in October to an annual rise of 3.6% down from 3.8%. Nervous at the […]

Piss up in a Parliament   Having sat in countless lectures by the people who quite literally wrote the book on tactical voting and collective action, I can assure you that academia doesn’t have the answers to voting outcomes especially under circumstances of manipulated voting. It’s not failings on their part, rather it’s the entropic […]

Thirty Years Ago: The Fall of the Berlin Wall   Since that seismic event in Europe and the ensuing wave of globalization that the world has experienced, it is interesting to see which economies have benefitted most: the answer is of course the USA, Brazil, Russia, India and China. In Europe the biggest winner has […]

Bank of England   The Monetary Policy Committee voted in favour of leaving rates on hold at 0.75% yesterday. Nothing surprising in that, but what was unexpected were the two votes in favour of cutting rates by 0.25% to reflect the lack of growth expectations globally. Combined with the impact of the ongoing Brexit uncertainty […]

Currency Markets   Lots going on in international currency markets largely due to the perception(note the word perception) that the talks and recent activity between USA and China are leading towards the signing of a trade deal later this month. Consequently trade orientated currencies led by the Yuan(CNY) and the Aussie Dollar (AUD) have benefitted […]

Negative   In a hailed return to phraseology I condone the expression “no news is good news”. Sure it has its flaws but it’s watertight in circumstances when it is deployed to mean that without information to the contrary we might assume that all is well. I’m also, quite obviously and tautologically, willing to accept […]

No seriously, this is the last one   I hope the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of America Jay Powell doesn’t have a sweet tooth. If he does, he’s in trouble as it appears, he simply can’t stop at one. Much like a child set loose with a biscuit tin, he couldn’t resist just […]