SGM-FX insights

Market Ranges   Following up on what we wrote on Monday about how the wholesale markets are experiencing much larger and faster movements than many people are accustomed to, GBP/USD yesterday traded a range of more than 1.5 cents; GBP/EUR a range of 1.25 cents and so on. Part of this is because of the […]

20th Party Congress   This week, considerable risks will flow into global markets from Asia. The epicentre of these risks will likely come from China as the ruling Communist Party holds its latest conference. China has played its role in global economic and foreign policy events over recent weeks and months. However, it’s role in […]

Global Markets   With 10 Year US Treasury Bonds yielding 4.02, Gold at $1640 and NYMEX Oil at $85.60, the stage is set for another pivotal week in world markets. UK readers might be forgiven given the blanket coverage on all things Downing Street related for thinking that the rest of the world is simply […]

UK Pound   Given its travails in the past weeks, it is refreshing to be able to report that GBP had a better day yesterday and is now trading at GBP/USD 1.1320 and GBP/EUR 1.1570. This was on the back of markets sensing a government u turn on the mini budget statement of Friday 23-09-22 […]

Budget Count Down   The Chancellor has brought forward the date upon which he will announce his new budget plan. Now apparently taking a less devolved approach from his previous ‘markets will be markets’ sentiment, the change of date was justified to give some certainty with respect to fiscal policy during this period of turmoil. […]

UK Government Bond Market   The market is a GBP 2.1 Trillion government bond market and therefore significant enough to attract attention. Nevertheless it is a mature market overseen by the hugely respected Bank of England. Yesterday BoE buying of securities was extended to include Inflation Linked Bonds and this morning it is reported that […]

An interesting conditionality   The markets have been following the meteoric rise in USDJPY closely. It is perceived as one of the key currency pairs out there that provides a multitude of wider signals about respective financial conditions in addition to its primary function of measuring clearing prices between the two constituent currencies. As one […]

Canada   In the past few weeks, Canada has been partially overlooked given the domestic focus on the USA and the economic implications for the rest of the world. Canada in many ways is a study worth making: inflation as at August of 7% with core inflation of 5%, the Bank of Canada has raised […]

USA   Unemployment claims up 29,000 and higher than expected started the wobble which was then compounded by a Federal Reserve Governor stating that despite the labour market self evidently cooling, there was no prospect of there being a respite in the rate rising agenda. WTI oil at $88.24 due to the much larger cut […]

A return to energy   First the context of yesterday’s trading session: Thanks to some data in the United States showing a more robust backdrop than may have been expected, positions that existed across global markets speculating that the Federal Reserve would have to take its foot off the pedal became increasingly untenable. There was […]

Strong Dollar Consequences   Since the 2011 low, USD is up 40% versus a broad set of trading currencies. While this is mostly good for the USA, it is less so for the countries and regions of some of those other currencies. For example the EUR is suffering from a much weaker exchange rate at […]

This lady is for turning   Yesterday the government made a U-turn on some of the headline taxation policies announced during the mini budget late last month. The focus of the rollback was on the 45% additional taxation rate recently announced by the Chancellor to be on the chopping block from April next year. The […]