Alec Douglas-Home was the last person to do it and that was over 50 years ago. Not even the Zoom Quizzes over Covid could have prepared me for this question but he was in fact the last former UK Prime Minister to be reinstated in a Cabinet position. His appointment to Foreign Secretary was 7 years after he lost a general election and it is almost exactly 7 years since David Cameron stepped away after a calamitous Brexit vote went against him so there are plenty of similarities but on a quiet Mo…

A few sore heads and tired souls within the execution team as a number attended The Trade – Leaders in Trading awards dinner last night. The bad news is that sadly I no longer fit into a 16.5 inch collar, the good news is that Redburn Atlantic won the award for Best Client Service. A huge congratulations to the EU Algo team who all work so hard to make sure our algo clients get the best possible service and it’s also important to mention/thank the Execution Architecture, Analytics and Operation…

A lot of talk about whether we’ve got a Santa Rally on our hands into year end or whether we reverse things in the near term. A lot certainly hoping it’s the former it must be said and there are little snippets that support that argument. Possibly the earliest sign of the Santa Rally were provided by a surprise guest in the Pret Sandwich fridge…that is right….the Pret Christmas Sandwich is back for its beautiful cameo on the lunch rota for the next 7 weeks! It feels earlier than normal it must…

Guy Fawkes last night and plenty of Fireworks going off all weekend much to the anger of our dog. All the Catherine Wheels, Roman Candles and Firecrackers must have been used up as there were certainly no signs of fireworks today. Walking in this morning there wasn’t really ever a sense there would be with a fairly quiet corporate calendar and no real shift in the macro backdrop over the weekend the Stoxx 600 was left to drift lower throughout the day and closed -16ps – no harm done. “Are you s…

The BoE and the Fed both have argued that it is too early to talk about cutting rates but who needs them anyway? The market has done it for them over the past 24 hours with the U.S. 10’s and 30’s and the UK 10’s having a 20-25bp cut enforced by market participants. It started with the Treasury size announcement Monday, continued with the Quarterly Treasury report on Wednesday and was given the all clear to carry on post a Fed that provided no real hawkish angle (at least not one that the market…

Usually on the day of a Fed decision there is a lot of waiting around but there was enough moving macro parts to keep us more than occupied and the moves today could be larger than we have post the Fed given that is expected to be a bit of a non-event. First there was the Treasury quarterly refunding announcement where they boosted funding by $9bn to $112bn that was below expectations. Almost all saw a boost in size, in line with expectations, while the 20y issue was held steady and the sales o…

Halloween today and I’ve never been one to get out the decorations and carve the pumpkins but it was Harry Potter themed celebrations at my daughters nursery today so that at least gave me something to think about. My ideas of a Hagrid costume with beard or a Golden Snitch were quite quickly dismissed and I was back to the drawing board and eventually we settled on a wizards cape. An opportunity missed I would say. Thankfully Halloween and month-end threw up few ‘scary’s’ to worry about today w…

Sometimes after a week like last week you have to step back from all the moves and listen to some of the stats that are being fired out by our amazing Charts team (even if I am biased). Last week the Euro Stoxx 50 fell for the 6th consecutive week for the first time since 2011 and hasn’t had 7 consecutive weekly falls since 1998. That has also coincided with another monthly slide for the S&P 500 that looks set to fall for a 3rd month in a row unless there are some Halloween inspired spooky move…

I’m off to a tombola tonight but it has a twist – I’m guaranteed to ‘win’. It’s a bit more quirky than that too as one of our favourite artists has sold c200 tickets each guaranteed to ‘win’ an original piece of his art. The risk is that it’s certainly not all stuff we want but like a lot of things in life you have to be in it to win it and I’m hoping for at least something that is ‘wall-worthy’. No prizes for guessing what my family will be getting for Christmas though. Today’s earnings a bit…

Today reminded me of the moment I got on a train from Kings Cross to Edinburgh a couple of days before Christmas, always the busiest, and they announced that seat reservations were not in service. I had everything all in place and it was all calm 10 minutes before I turned up (bit like today), supplies for the journey in tow (Strong flat white), iPad charged and then amidst the chaos and confusion ended up standing all the way to Newcastle with an M&S bag full of goodies. We knew what companies…