Good morning
Well its been a few days since my last report and It feels like a lot has happened in that time. Thursday I went under the knife for a shoulder op to tidy up a couple of bits from the replacement I had a couple of years ago. All seems to have gone well although I’m now stuck with an annoying sling and an inability to do too much with my left arm for a period of timer. It shouldn’t be too long, although I do want to be sure I don’t rush into anything that would negate the work they have done. I am amazed that you can have muscles and tendons detached and reattached and come home with movement, feeling and little in the way of pain.
The timing of the operation could hardly have been better. I missed the worldwide outage of computer systems. While recuperating, namely sitting on the sofa feeling a bit sorry for myself, I had the Open, test cricket, F1, Hurling and Tour de France to keep me company. Oh, and some decent weather as well although sadly I didn’t venture out too much. What a way to recover though. Congratulations to Schauffele in the Open who took a well-earned victory over Justin Rose. England looked like they were going to be in for a difficult time in the cricket but a last innings collapse from the West Indies gave England victory, and in the F1 it was Oscar Piastri who took the chequered flag. Hurling is quite a decent spectacle, not sure I could watch it every week but its fast, action-packed and pretty brutal at times.
Tadej Pogocar took the Tour de France title for the this time but it was Mark Cavendish who deserves a special mention for his historic achievement of breaking the record of the most stage wins in the race at the age of 39 years old, having twice come out of retirement to achieve the feat having failed last year after a crash ended his race with a broken collarbone. With 35 stage wins he is now ahead of the legendary Eddy Merckx.
Very well done to all those winners, and of course those who took part. Someone who won’t be taking part in a contest now in the US president Joe Biden who, after much talk, speculation and promises he is fully committed to being President again, has finally stepped out of the November elections, handing over to Kamala Harris. Trump remains odds-on favourite to win the election, Harris frankly doesn’t look as though she has what it takes with almost as many videoed outtakes and nonsensical mutterings as Biden.
To the markets, well the US dollar has gained and GBP dropped a little since my last report from the middle of last week. GBPUSD had hit a high of 1.30445 on Wednesday, by Friday afternoon it was back down at 1.2900, now 1.2925. Similarly, EURUSD had reached 1.0945 before slipping back to 1.0880, not quite seeing the scale of losses as GBP which is highlighted in the fall in GBPEUR from 1.1930 to current levels around 1.1870.
ECB left rates unchanged last week as widely expected, we do have a BoC rate meeting this week and after softer than expected inflation numbers last week the consensus seems to be for a 25bps cut in rates. USDCAD currently 1.3745, GBPCAD 1.7760. Otherwise, interest this week comes from a host of EU, UK and US PMIs, US GDP and US inflation data in the form of PCE. So we do have some decent data this week but I must warn you that next week is where much of the event risk remains, with FOMC rate announcement and nonfarm payrolls from the US, while we will also find out what our own central bank will see fit for UK rates.
Have a great day, not much on the calendar today but it does pick up later in the week.
- 11.00 German Buba monthly report
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