SGM-FX insights

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 […]

  It’s Official: The Market is now on an Election footing   Further acres of newsprint and a torrent of tv and social media comment in prospect the General Election on December 12 is the first since 1923 to take place just before Christmas. And……the currency market has not moved GBP at all on that […]

Super Mario   Finally running out of Mushrooms, Super Mario has delivered his last speech as President of the European Central Bank. I’m sure there were other jokes afforded by the potential to assimilate the Italian central banker’s name within a popular Nintendo character and game but, with an underwhelming appetite for video games, I’ll […]

  South Africa: ZAR expected to weaken further   Patience within the business community is wearing thin in the face of the slow pace of relatively new President Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic reforms. This seems hard since he inherited a long list of problems but that’s the thing about markets: they are hard. Wednesday this week […]

Joker   Well the joke (if that is what it was) was definitely on me: off we went to the local Cineworld for the must see Todd Phillips movie Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix and Robert de Niro. Drawn in by the film taking $96M on its opening weekend and more than $250M to date and […]

Gale force 12   Phraseology meets foreign exchange part two – ‘any port in a storm’. This time I’m on side, I would indeed rather be in any port in a storm than, as the phrase assumes, out at sea staring down a Beaufort scale-rattling wind. But, once again, it’s got limitations largely created by […]