Good morning
I hope you had a great weekend. Have to say it was pretty decent, it was a lot warmer than I’d feared, with some sunny spells which made it feel positively warm, enough for me to shift the leaves and walk the dog in shorts. Its not quite as nice now, looks like we have a day of wet weather ahead and as we move further on in the week we’ll have some lower temperatures. We don’t have any of the snow and ice that some areas have been forecast to get.
The US dollar ended last week on a high against GBP, GBPUSD having been as low as 1.2595 late on Friday. The pair did push up to 1.2640 in the early hours of this morning but as I type we are 1.2625, some 300 points lower than around this time last week. EURUSD is also lower than it started last week, now 1.0550 having dipped very briefly below 1.0500 on Thursday. GBP is lower against EUR having seen a high above 1.2100 last Monday , we are currently testing last week’s lows around 1.1965.
USDJPY is well of its highs of 156.75 last week, now 154.80 but it did trade as low as 153.80 late Friday and again this morning. The Ueda press conference this morning, which had been announced at quite short notice, failed to give any firm guidance as to rate moves in December, preferring instead to fall back on the ‘depends on the state of the economy at each meeting’ theme. The balanced tone disappointed those looking for possible rate rises next month.
US has allowed Ukraine to use American long-range weapons to strike deep inside Russian territory for the first time. We’ve not heard from Putin on the matter but already Russian officials have called it a ‘very big step towards world war three’. The move comes as Russian launched huge drone and missile attacks on Ukraine over the weekend. Gold pushed up from last week’s lows around US$2,537 up to almost $2,600.
England’s football team had a solid victory over Republic of Ireland yesterday, winning 5-0 and topping the group as a result. This was Carsley’s last match as interim manager, Thomas Tuchel takes over at the start of the year, inheriting a squad of pretty excellent, young players with whom he is hoping to challenge for the World Cup in 2026. Exciting times ahead, we hope.
England’s cricketers lost the fourth T20 match against West Indies, their first loss in the series having reached an unassailable 3-0 lead. The final match was washed out after heavy rain. A win in the T20 series after defeat in the ODI series.
In rugby, England lost to South Africa, having recently lost to New Zealand and Australia. Disappointing, particularly as England did seem to have chances to win all three. It hasn’t been a great run, England will hope to return to winning ways against Japan next Sunday.
The big sporting event of the weekend was the boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. Tyson lost on points but it was difficult to know whether both were really trying. Tyson, at 58, did well to last the eight round match, some say he shouldn’t have fought at all, others think he was deliberately restrained. Similarly, Jake Paul, a youtuber who has turned to boxing, is clearly a decent fighter and some think he could have knocked out Tyson in the later rounds had he chosen to do so. Anyway, whatever your views, the bout was watched by some 60 million households and possibly would have been more had Netflix not crashed several times due to the number of people tuning in. A success for ‘free’ boxing on tv. Well, free if you subscribe to Netflix that is.
We’ve had a reasonably calm start to the week, particularly when we consider the escalation in the Ukraine/Russia conflict. Central bank officials on the calendar today but the week belongs to inflation releases, with latest data from EU, Canada, UK and Japan all out this week. We will also have UK retail sales as well as EU, UK and US PMIs. Not the biggest week perhaps but certainly enough to keep us on our toes.
Have a great day
- 13.00 ECBs Lane speaks
- 15.00 Feds Goolsbee speaks
- 18.30 ECBs Lagarde speaks
- 18.30 BoEs Greene speaks
- 00.30 RBA minutes
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