Posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012 at 7:47 am.
EU Summit far exceeds market expectations, fuelling euro rally Market confidence in the build-up to last week’s EU Summit was pretty much at rock bottom. Angela Merkel’s continued tough stance on eurobonds seemed to indicate a wider deadlock between Germany on one side and struggling eurozone nations such as France, Spain and Italy on the [...] Read More...
Posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 at 3:51 pm.
The long-awaited Greek elections last Sunday produced the result the market wanted, but only to an extent. New Democracy – the main pro-bailout, pro-euro party – won the election, but by only the smallest of margins, so the uncertainty of coalition-forming remained. What also remains are the inevitable attempts to renegotiate Greece’s bailout terms by [...] Read More...
Posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 at 8:32 am.
The weekend headlines have revealed that Spain’s banks will be given the support they desperately need through €100bn of emergency EU funding. This is a decent signal of intent from the EU’s leaders; it buys Spain some time and eases concerns surrounding spiraling debt contagion in the eurozone, but it is far from a solution [...] Read More...
Posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2012 at 7:42 am.
Doom and gloom on the domestic front but GBP remains popular The basket case that is Greece has dominated the financial headlines in recent weeks. The country’s May 6th elections saw the ruling pro-bailout coalition fail to secure sufficient support from Greece’s angry electorate. This ushered in a month of huge uncertainty as the market [...] Read More...
Posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 at 3:45 pm.
Now there’s no doubt that the people of the UK are welcoming with open arms the extra bank holiday that will be part of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations. However, if we take the similar example of last year’s Royal Wedding, then we can expect a significant hit to the UK economy. It is estimated that [...] Read More...
Posted on Monday, May 28th, 2012 at 3:35 pm.
Greek opinion polls give the market some hope The euro was given some relief in early Monday trading by the positive news that in Greece, the conservative and pro-austerity party – New Democracy – has edged ahead of the anti-bailout party Syriza in the opinion polls. If New Democracy can hang on to their lead [...] Read More...
Posted on Monday, May 21st, 2012 at 4:26 pm.
Whilst sterling remains strong against the commodity currencies, it has suffered somewhat against the euro and the US dollar in recent sessions. The Bank of England’s Quarterly Inflation Report proved the catalyst for a significant bout of profit-taking on the pound’s rally. The Report saw the BoE downgrade its longer-term inflation and growth forecasts, sounding [...] Read More...
Posted on Friday, May 18th, 2012 at 11:05 am.
Sterling remains flavour of the month Sterling has climbed by a further three cents against the euro in the past fortnight. Sterling’s progress against commodity currencies such as the AUD, NZD, CAD and ZAR has been ever more impressive in the past few months. Sterling has climbed by over 10% against the ZAR and NZD [...] Read More...
Posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 at 11:20 am.
Sterling has enjoyed an excellent month, with more gains likely to come against the euro Sterling has performed excellently in the past month, hitting fresh multi-month highs almost across the board. Some notably less dovish Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) minutes provided the trigger for a sterling rally in April, with the market subsequently betting against [...] Read More...
Posted on Monday, April 30th, 2012 at 3:47 pm.
UK enters a technical recession but sterling still flying high The preliminary reading of the UK’s Q1 GDP figure came in last week to reveal a 0.2% contraction, which triggered a wave of headlines regarding the UK economy having entered a double-dip recession. Still though, the pound is on the offensive across the board, which [...] Read More...