Daily Snapshot

I know I may be late to this but I’ve got really into BBC’s ‘World On Fire’ these past few days. I missed the first series but that is what the iPlayer is for and I love myself a bit of World War II docuseries action so its right up my street. Some storyline’s aren’t the most believable but us sales-traders know it’s all about the telling of the story rather than the story itself and this does that. The story we have to tell today is a positive one and although we have doubted whether we will e…

Well that was a bit more like it! All it needed was a disappointing miss from Europe’s biggest company to spur some action into what usually is a fairly quiet day as we wait to hear what the FOMC have to say for themselves! 7pm the big moment and we expect +25bp to 5.25% – 5.5% and a peak of 6% though real rates are now above 2% and becoming restrictive. We think the economy needs nominal rates of 6% and real rates of 2-3% for inflation to return durably to 2%. The June CPI print that showed he…

The year is 2037, Taylor Swift is President of the United States of America, Cristiano Ronaldo is back playing for Man United for the sixth time aged 52 and the Euro Stoxx closed at 4397.5, unable to break through the 4400 level for the 1845th time of trying. Holiday blues setting in hard this morning as I logged in to find a small deluge of earnings to sieve through amongst a largely stale European tape with the Stoxx 600 managing to eke out a 50bp gain but we are still rangebound! The bad new…

Has anyone been to Montpellier airport yet this summer? What an Airport! Hands down the smoothest, calmest airport experience I have had in a long time and this was despite having 7 young children in tow. The real highlight was with a 2 hour delay (hard to believe) thanks to French Traffic Control (which seems to be a theme) they allowed us to go to buy duty free bottles of rouge which they opened for us and allowed us to drink on their terrace – c’était superbe! There wasn’t too much to rush…

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So the Redburn interns are on Week 3 of their summer placements here and it is safe to say that after a nervy start they are getting into their stride. What wouldn’t you give to be 21 again ey. Already today we’ve had one of them write a system to improve our IOIs while another one whizzed up an Excel spreadsheet that speaks to our CRM thingy. Properly clever stuff and this lot can look you in the eye and have a chat and everything. Can they do a breakfast run for 20 in the pouring rain though?…

We often joke about how a ‘sales trader’ has to become an expert in various different subjects dependent on the season (storm chasers in September) or dominant news stories (epidemiologists, submariners, even experts in Rhine water levels). As US banks officially kicked off the start of the latest earnings season, we now move into the quarterly window where the most helpful skills are more commonly on show in a circus Big Top. No, not clowns, although it’s not unheard of slapstick comedy enteri…

Pretty much every member of my extended family have made their way to Wimbledon this week to catch a bit of what is one of the highlights of the quintessentially British summer sporting calendar. I’m yet to get shown the offer to go along with but with the Equity markets right now we’ve got a fairly even Tennis match on our hands unfolding right in front of our eyes. Bulls and bears, back and forth for what feels like an enormous rally over the past 5 months but it was the bulls with a powerful…

In a sign of the sad state of affairs in European Equities, the EuroStoxx 50 only needed to close up 102bps to be the best up day in 6 weeks. It didn’t manage it though it did tease us for a while with the Euro Stoxx 50 and Stoxx 600 closing +70bps on the day but to think the largest 50 stocks in Europe haven’t managed to combine for a >1% up day in 6 weeks is slightly depressing. Let’s forgive the market a little, it is the middle of summer, school holidays, peak summer sport season and Q2 ear…

I missed the lively start to the quarter/half but I was at least slightly hopeful that the tape would resemble the eventful scenes at The Palio di Sienna more than the tranquillity of the Uffizi but I was wrong. Obviously I’ve had to put in the only two cultural things I actually did on holiday in the first sentence because most of the holiday was spent drinking wine by the pool and watching the Ashes! Not too many things to blame for the lack of action today but it falls into the ‘Monday in Ju…