SGM-FX insights

UK PLC   Great news is that the employment rate of 76.1% is the highest since (meaningful) records were kept and even though unemployment has edged up slightly, it is still only 3.9%.With 32.81 million people in work and an extra 425,000 jobs created in the past year, the UK employment figures are very good […]

Excuses   Argentina as a nation, with the exception of war, and provided we’re not talking about a specific key national export, is not a global market mover. To be frank, its spending power, population, financial market participation and share of global trade are all too small for the South American nation to move markets […]

Negative Interest Rates   Some of our readers have been asking what this means as they are struggling to get their heads around the concept. Essentially it is akin to a storage charge but imposed by banks for your money rather than by Big Yellow for your goods and chattels. Fortunately in the U.K. at […]

GBP   We have written about the various scenarios for GBP over the next three months several times in the past weeks and it is fair to say that the market continued at least until this week to ascribe a 10% chance of a NoDeal Brexit. That has now changed with 30% ie 3 times […]

Gold Wednesday   Yesterday didn’t quite resemble the events of 16th September 1992, black Wednesday, when market chaos ensued and the British Pound was forced to drop out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. However, there were dangerous currents afoot across bond, foreign exchange and equity markets showing a widespread flee to safety: perhaps it’ll go […]

Swiss Private Banks: Serving their Clients   As everyone knows, the feelgood factor of leaving surplus cash with a Swiss Private Bank is worth something. Well, recently Credit Suisse quantified that something by charging their well heeled clients with EUR 1 million a 0.4% fee. Now UBS has raised the game by charging their clients […]

Sevennnnn!   Yesterday the exchange rate between the US Dollar and the Chinese Renminbi broke through the 7.0 threshold for the first time since 2008. An initial glance at market action yesterday: Pound down, global equities some 2% off their opening price and defensive havens rallying might seem like overkill as a reaction to the […]

GBP and What is the Outlook over the next 3 months?   A number of our clients both private and corporate are asking us what the outlook for GBP is with the differing probabilities of outcomes on Brexit: No Deal is given a probability of 30%, a Deal by 31 October 15%, a delay to the […]

  Aussie Rules   As England does battle with Australia at Edgbaston for the 5 Day Test Match and all those cricket stats are dusted off, we have been looking at how GBP has done against AUD in the past 10 years. In 2009, if one timed it right GBP would buy AUD 2.00 but […]

‘ave a word!   Last night’s interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve in the United States was a messy one. In fact the decision itself was rather well presented by Chairman Jay Powell and the FOMC but markets’ interpretations of the decision seemed fraught with confusion. Equities, bonds and the US Dollar all moved […]

US-China Trade Talks   For the first time in over 3 months the two sides reconvened yesterday for the oldest reason in the world: self-interest. Make no mistake these trade disagreements are costing real money to both sides: Huawei is hurting following the US banning American firms from using their technology; US agriculture is hurting […]

Submerged Sterling   All hell was breaking loose in financial markets yesterday whilst Johnson was visiting a submarine in Scotland. Photographed inside the control room, a stern-faced Boris couldn’t have done much more to develop the perception of his war-cabinet and his hard nosed government. Okay, perhaps firing one of the missiles at Brussels to […]