Good morning
I’m back from a few days out, spent some time on the south coast and I have to say the stretch of beach between Sandbanks and Hengistbury has to be one of my favourite places. I do like the ‘seaside’, it doesn’t have to be grand or modern for me, in fact sometimes the tacky places can have more appeal. As long as there’s fish and chips, I’m generally a happy man.
I’m pleased to see that Russia have not yet invaded Ukraine. We have had some conflicting reports, on one hand there was some talk that Ukraine had attacked Russian areas, it would seem as though this could have been an attempt at the fabrication of events that US have said Russia will employ as a reason to invade, while there doesn’t seem to be any proof to back up Russian claims that they have been withdrawing some forces. Difficult to know these days what is propaganda and what is genuine news. I wonder whether Russia are being polite and waiting for the end of the Olympics in China before taking action. They finish Sunday. I’m worried.
Closer to home we are facing a battle of our own against the elements today with red weather warnings across the south of England as storm Eunice arrives. That’s serious stuff. Not much we can do other than sit it out and hope there is little damage. Good luck!
I can’t say I have got fully up to speed with the markets, I know they have been pulled about a bit by sentiment driven mostly from Ukraine. Gold, a traditional safe-haven, briefly traded above $1900 for the first time since June last year. JPY, another currency that tends to do well as a safe-haven, is off its recent lows, USDJPY at 115.20, EURJPY 131.00. US dollar is actually not as strong as I thought it would be, EURUSD up at 1.1375, GBP performing very well with GBPUSD at 1.3635 and EURGBP 0.8340 (GBPEUR 1.1990).
So to the weekend, plenty of sport to entertain us, a bit of curling and a bit of bobsleigh to watch from China, lots of football including Spurs v Man City (why am I quietly confident?), and my U15s return to league action this weekend which, after a few cup matches against higher ranked teams, I’m hoping will be less nerve-wracking. Mind you, our opponents scored eight goals in their most recent league match and no doubt they’ll be looking for a repeat of that performance against us. I’ll report back Monday.
- 13.00 ECBs Elderson speaks
- 13.30 CAD retail sales
- 15.00 US existing home sales
- 15.00 EU consumer confidence
- 16.00 US Fed monetary policy report
- 18.30 ECBs Panetta speaks
- 20.30 CFTC position data
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