It's not the football making the headlines

The big news over the weekend was the Euro 2020 championship began but it wasn’t the football that got the headlines, rather the incredible actions of the medical personnel to save the life of Christian Ericsson, the Danish player who suffered a cardiac arrest during the match on Saturday evening. I guess if one is ever unfortunate enough to have a cardiac arrest, an international football match could be the place to have it, given the top-level medical staff and equipment to hand.

I do remember doing a first aid course a couple of years back, so different to the first aid courses given in scouts which was about making a sling etc. Now the advice for most things is ‘get them to a doctor’ with real first aid really consisting of CPR. Anything else should be handled by a professional but CPR is where life-saving takes place. Time is of the essence in the event of a cardiac arrest, as is access to a defibrillator. The statistic is something like 10% chance of survival from normal CPR, rising to near 80% if a defibrillator is used within three minutes. Find out where your nearest machine is located, it could be the difference between life and death.

As far as the football goes, England got off to a winning start with a comfortable if slightly unconvincing 1-0 win over Croatia. Meanwhile Harefield Utd U14s ended the season with a 3-0 win at home, a great way to end what has been a rather difficult season.

Judging by the number of email out of office replies I have had this morning it would appear many people have taken the opportunity to enjoy the sunshine that should be with us for a couple more days. I reckon we get the FOMC meeting out of the way this week and we’ll see markets turn to holiday mode. Yes, its only mid-June but I just get the feeling people are ready to slow down a bit.

USD – The dollar had a bit of a push higher late last week as the market begins to worry the Fed may have got the transitory inflation idea wrong. A lot of talk of the Fed now being behind the curve which will make life harder as and when they are called in to action. The Fed remain unconcerned although we haven’t heard from Fed officials as they are in the blackout period ahead of Wednesdays FOMC meeting. There is certainly a feeling in the markets that Fed could offer a hawkish surprise this week.

EUR – EURUSD traded lower Friday as dollar found support, the pair trading down 100 pips from almost 1.2200 to just below 1.2100. Support around 1.2090 has held, it currently trades 1.2120 helped by some early EURGBP buying. Attention on the UK and the border check dispute with UK, looks like EU are sticking to their guns on this with, it seems, the support of the G7.

GBP – GBPUSD traded down from near 1.42 Friday to just below 1.41 on that dollar strength Friday, although GBP did have a decent day against EUR with EURGBP trading down from 0.8605 (GBPEUR 1.1620) to 0.8570 (1.1670). This morning however the pair is back up towards 0.8600 (1.1630) as it becomes clear he UK could well struggle to find support if it fails to reach its commitments under the NI protocol. Not helping GBP is the idea that UK will postpone its reopening, perhaps even to end-July. That announcement is due today. UK unemployment early tomorrow morning, BoEs Bailey speaks later today .

- 10.00 EU industrial production

- 13.30 CAD manufacturing sales

- 14.00 BoEs Bailey speaks

- 22.00 NZ Westpac consumer survey

- 02.30 RBA minutes

- 07.00 UK unemployment