SGM-FX insights

Chun Yun Saturday marked the start of the largest annual human migration when the Lunar New Year kicked off in China. This surge in travel numbers in China will be watched especially carefully given the consequences for the world at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic 3 long years ago. USD/CNY 6.8370. UK Demographics Uncovered […]

Employment News The fact that the world’s 11th largest employer, Amazon has announced that it will lay off 18,000 workers was excitably reported, analysed and discussed at length yesterday. Given that Amazon employs 1.5 million, while not a matter of no consequence for the 18,000, the fact remains that it represents 1.2% of the workforce. […]

Is a weak PM what the country needs? I’ll agree with you, the title of this daily briefing sounded more daily mail in style than I’m typically comfortable with. But the more I consider the question the more it makes sense. Boris was condemned by scandal, not policy. It was party gate not the substance […]

Gold In the past 12 years Central Bank Quarterly purchases of gold have ranged between 100 and 200 tonnes -except for a couple of blips. But in Q3 2022 it blew out to 400 tonnes. Another blip or a trend? Before answering that, it is the single biggest quarter for Central bank purchases of gold […]

Two-way traffic resumes As 2023 begins there is an increasing sense of normalisation within currency flows. For the latter half of 2022 there were very few plays other than trades orientated towards gaining exposure to the Federal Reserve’s astronomic interest rate adjustments. Whilst allowing the US Dollar to rally, this also left ultra-low yielding currencies […]

EUR Taking stock of the most traded currency pair EUR/USD on this the last trading year of 2022 currently standing at 1.0655 with not one but four of the top market commentators predicting that EUR will fall below par to the USD in the next 6 months. For battle wearied currency traders after such a […]

Pandemic Politics Before looking at how the concerns surrounding the surge of Covid infections in China are affecting the markets, a brief word on how they are behaving in general. In FX at least, there is a very different feel to price action and liquidity conditions. Most of 2022 provided very volatile conditions with stretched […]

UK Post Christmas Sales Despite rail strikes and more expensive fuel costs, shoppers were back in force not only in the two strongest retail areas of the South east and London but across the country as a whole. Despite the best efforts of the online commentators to pour cold water on this boost to retail […]

Why is GBP weaker this week? Apart from the age old adage of more sellers than buyers it comes down to the UK’s relative economic performance versus other countries. While Germany has grown by an anaemic 0.3% since Q4 2019, the UK has contracted by 0.8%. Contrast that with a different picture in North America: […]

UK Recession – coming, going, gone? Last week’s saga of central bank decisions has already been well analysed and digested. The implications for the policy adjustments made last week have been scrutinised and speculated over. Ultimately none of the central banks that met from the Fed, the ECB and Bank of England, nor any other […]

Japan Big move by the Bank of Japan to adjust the central bank’s yield curve control programme which had a disproportionate effect since it was unexpected. 10 year yields previously capped at 0.25% on Government Bonds will now have a new ceiling of 0.50%. Despite the BoJ’s stating that this does not represent a sea […]

Return of the Letterings Do you remember once the shock and fear of the Coronavirus pandemic had resided in late 2020, attention swung to what the path of the recovery would look like. As a brief recap, the shape of the expected path of economic recovery was often likened to the shape of letters. The […]