Good morning
Well what a fantastic weekend that was. The weather was terrific, I nearly found myself saying it was too warm at one point, I managed to stop myself before doing so. We didn’t get any of the thunderstorms that were forecast. Many were lucky enough to see the Northern Lights with their own eyes. Spurs scraped a much needed win, making quite hard work of it against a team struggling for Premier League survival. Barring a ridiculous result, we will see the three teams that came up from the Championship last season all going straight back down again, highlighting just how difficult life is in the Premier League. Nottingham Forest have survived by the skin of their teeth.
I spent much of the day in London yesterday, we went to a VR gaming place where you don suits, headphones and goggles and enter a world of virtual reality. It takes very little time to forget about reality and immerse yourself into the game. Its still very early days for the technology, I wonder how good it will be in ten years time. Good fun, but not cheap. It was my youngest’s 17th birthday so aside from the expense of the day itself, I now have to contend with the minefield that is car insurance. It is going to be painful.
Anyway, to the markets. Well the reality here is that there isn’t much in the way of news. We did have a weaker Michigan sentiment survey from the US Friday afternoon, but it was countered by a slightly higher inflation expectation which left the markets pretty much unchanged.
For the record, GBPUSD is off the morning highs, now 1.2520. EURUSD 1.0775, GBPEUR 1.1620. USDJPY is holding just below 156.00 as it has done since the likely intervention in early May, which puts GBPJPY at 195.00. Yen did actually have a small and brief rally in the early hours of this morning, USDJPY traded to 155.50 ins a straight line but soon pushed back up to the 155.90 area.
We also saw the latest RBNZ inflation expectations in the early hours of this morning, coming in lower than expected which pushed NZD down, GBPNZD trading up from 2.0815 to 2.0870 although this bit of GBP weakness this morning sees the pair back down to 2.0840. RBNZ will be delighted with the lower readings.
It isn’t the busiest of weeks again in terms of economic data. We do have UK unemployment early tomorrow morning but the highlight will certainly be US CPI inflation on Wednesday. Fed will be really hoping to see any sign of softening which would likely see USD weaken a touch, but some think we could see USD push a little higher as we head towards the release. Until then, certainly today, there isn’t much to get our teeth into. A couple of Fed speakers are really the extent of the calendar today.
More football this evening, I’ll be hoping Aston Villa lose to Liverpool to keep Spurs hopes of a fourth place alive, however I’m not confident Spurs will overcome the might of Man City on Tuesday evening. Arsenal are back to the top of the table but Man City have a game in hand. Arsenal fans will find themselves having to support Spurs for 90 minutes tomorrow evening. I was asked whether Spurs would deliberately lose to mess up Arsenal’s league hopes, I sincerely hope not and very much doubt it, although a defeat for Spurs would no doubt be cheered by the Spurs fans. Incredible that after a whole season, the title race comes down to the very last match of the season.
That’s all for this morning, have a great day.
- 14.00 Feds Jefferson, Mester speak
- 07.00 UK unemployment
- 07.00 German HICP
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