SGM-FX insights

Oil As we have been pointing to, oil has been edging up and is now on a 7 month high. Not it should be stressed on a rosey economic picture but rather on increasing tensions in the Middle East-the latest being the Israeli strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus.Brent: USD 88.70 Sunny Spain The […]

A long shot: 1/2 The world, in particular, the Northern Atlantic in a number of words that leaves you with some probability of reading the final sentence: no pressure then. Financial markets and FX in particular all tend to boil down to rates: interest rates, inflation rates, rates of return etc. The financial universe is […]

Quarter End For those markets, including the UK, which will be observing Good Friday, today will be the last trading session of both March and Q1 2024. This means that we should expect today to mark the final day of any major FX position adjustment. The end of a month, quarter or year brings with […]

EU Border Controls 26,000 respondents in 18 jurisdictions have spoken and 51% of them are dissatisfied with border controls and the level of immigration into the EU. Now that is a statistic that political parties across the EU should sit up and take notice of in the next two months in the lead up to […]

A 1.08 floor? As we wrote yesterday, a surprise interest rate cut in Switzerland from the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has jolted markets into life. Over the last month, the probability of interest rate cuts at major central banks has been falling consistently. This surprise cut from the SNB last week has awoken investors to […]

UK Trade Deals While there have been deals signed with Australia in 2021 and New Zealand in 2022, the past post Brexit years in respect of trade deals have been more about which deals have not been agreed that should have been rather than those that did get signed: Canada due to the UK refusing […]

Bank of England As expected UK interest rates were left unchanged following the Monetary Policy Committee’s meeting this week. The message is clear that the Old Lady will not be rushed into making hasty interest rate reduction decisions,and, given that inflation is still at 3.4%, the market sold GBP immediately after the announcement yesterday lunch […]

Flimsy Overnight there has been a significant repricing in the US Dollar. Major Dollar crosses are exhibiting significant Dollar weakness as a result of the market’s interpretation of the Federal Reserve’s decision yesterday evening. Most of the headlines from the FOMC decision would leave you scratching your head to reconcile the meeting with the overnight […]

UK Infrastructure British electricity demand is expected to rise by 64% in the next 10 years and could double by 2050. This increase is in large part down to ambitious decarbonisation targets which result in a shift towards transport and heating for example being almost completely powered by electricity. The deadline for decarbonisation is 2035 […]

Negative Rates End The moment that markets seem to have been chasing for forever and a day finally arrived overnight. The Bank of Japan has ended its negative interest rate policy, setting benchmark rates within a positive band. The looseness of Japan’s monetary policy had left the Yen as the funding currency of choice and […]

US Dollar The USD had a strong week more on the realisation that US interest rates are unlikely to fall as soon as hoped than on particularly strong economic data. In particular USD moved up against JPY. The USD index moved up the most this past week since the beginning of January.USD/JPY 149.05. Space VIP […]

Brent Oil Having traded in a range of $75-85 for some time conventional wisdom is that despite some supply disruption, the oil market looks benign when it comes to price volatility. However, that supply disruption is not receding and may in fact be increasing as time passes and stocks are run down. Recent drone attacks […]