Good morning
Well first I should say I hope you survived the storm on Friday. As I sit here this morning there is another storm taking hold but although it is very windy it is nothing compared to last week. No major damage this end so far though, I’m pleased to report.
UK PM Johnson is due to announce plans to end Covid restrictions completely, even to the extent that someone with Covid will not have to isolate under law. This is all part of his ‘living with Covid’ plan and is likely to see a reduction in testing as well although obviously there are words of caution being pushed around about it being too soon and that there are still likely to be new variants. It is a brave step and we’ll only really know if it’s the right thing when we have tried it. I do wonder whether an end of Covid restriction could lead to more tlak of a Johnson resignation. He could leave saying he led the country through the worst crisis since world war 2 and has decided its right to go now. Just a thought.
Obviously the Ukraine/Russia crisis dominates headlines and with reports of more Russian troops moving to the Ukrainian border I still think it is unlikely Russia will not invade. There is still some talk of a possible diplomatic solution, Macron is trying to organise a summit between Biden and Putin, which would follow a meeting between US SecState Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. This suggestion of a summit has helped risk sentiment a little with EU equities looking positive early on.
US dollar has been unmoved by the news that JP Morgan are looking for nine Fed rate rises of 25bps in a row, and remains well of its recent highs with GBPUSD up at 1.3635, EURUSD 1.1370 and EURGBP 0.8335 (GBPEUR 1.1995).
US presidents day today so no US data of note, Feds Bowman speaks but more attention likely to be on PMI data from this side of the pond.
Congratulations to the mens and womens GB curling teams who won silver and gold respectively in Beijing. Exciting, but not as exciting as Spurs v Man City over the weekend which saw Spurts take all three points from the league leaders. I am sorry to report than my U15s match was called off due to bad weather at the weekend, which means we are falling even further behind with our league fixtures. With not enough weekends between now and the end of the season, we’ll be looking at midweek evening matches just as soon as its light enough.
- 09.00 EU markit manufacturing PMI
- 09.30 UK markit manufacturing PMI
- 16.15 Feds Bowman speaks
- 01.00 RBAs Kent speaks
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