What moved this week and what it means for expats in SE Asia
Markets, currencies, and macro events filtered through one lens: what does it mean for a European professional living in Malaysia, Singapore, or Thailand with assets spread across multiple jurisdictions?
The Fed held its nerve despite hawkish odds, oil round-tripped through $90 twice, and sterling clawed back everything it lost the week before
By last Friday the market had priced roughly a one-in-three chance of a US rate rise at Wednesday's meeting, built entirely on a single week of $100 oil. The Federal Reserve held anyway. Wednesday's vote split 9 to 3, holding the policy rate at 3.50% to 3.75% (three governors, Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan, preferred to raise). The near-term move didn't happen. The underlying lean didn't go away either: markets still expect two quarter-point rises before the year is out, just not this month. Oil did its own round trip. Brent spiked back above $90 on Wednesday after President Trump threatened fresh strikes on Iran, then eased through the rest of the week as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz recovered, closing the month at $87.93. Whatever the day-to-day print showed, July itself was the strongest month for oil since March, up roughly 24%.
The conflict itself refuses to resolve in either direction. On Saturday, Trump said he was cancelling a planned strike on Iran, citing progress in talks. The same weekend, a tanker was hit by an unidentified projectile near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, and an Iranian general warned Gulf states hosting US forces that they "will burn in the fires of war." Read the calm headline and you miss the live one underneath it. This remains a de-escalation, not a resolution, and the oil price will keep reflecting that.
Britain moved the opposite way to the week before, and the direction is worth noting precisely because it undoes a pattern this page flagged as unusual. The Bank of England held its rate at 3.75% on Thursday, a 6 to 3 vote, and the 10-year gilt yield eased to 4.989% from the 5.05% close and 5.07% intraday peak of the week before. Unlike the previous week, sterling moved with the yield rather than against it: up 0.74% against the dollar and 0.63% against the ringgit. Last week's "rates rising, currency falling" pattern, read here as a sign the market was pricing UK fiscal risk rather than policy, didn't repeat. One week of normal correlation doesn't undo that reading on its own, but it's a reminder that a single divergent week needs a second data point before it becomes a thesis.
Equities had a straightforwardly good week, and for once the reason sat inside company results rather than headline risk. The S&P 500 rose 1.05% to 7,489.72 and the Nasdaq 1.59% to 25,373.85 on strong Big Tech earnings, Amazon chief among them, a reversal of the AI-spending scepticism that dragged both indices lower the week before. The volatility index fell almost 14% to 15.99, pricing essentially no war premium despite the Iran threats over the weekend. Hong Kong extended its run as the region's standout, up 3.69% for a third straight week. Gold went nowhere again: $4,042.97, down 0.22%, its fourth consecutive week failing to catch a bid from a conflict that is still, by any definition, live.
One piece of UK planning uncertainty resolved this week. Chancellor John Healey confirmed the Autumn Budget for Wednesday 28 October, the earliest realistic date this page has been flagging since it opened. Anyone with a UK pension decision, a CETV under consideration, or year-end tax planning tied to Budget timing now has a fixed point to plan around rather than an open window.
Currency rates relevant to European expats in SE Asia
As at Friday 31 July close. Rates are indicative. Source: European Central Bank reference rates.
Currency context for this week
Sterling had its best week in over a month, recovering most of what it lost the week before. GBP/MYR rose to 5.49 from 5.45, and GBP/USD to 1.3423 from 1.3324, a reversal of the pattern flagged here last week, where rising UK yields and a falling pound looked like the market pricing fiscal risk rather than policy. This week gilts eased and sterling firmed together, the textbook relationship. One week of normal behaviour doesn't retire the earlier concern, but it's worth watching whether it repeats before treating either as the rule.
The euro moved almost as much, up 0.95% against the dollar and 0.84% against the ringgit, EUR/MYR to 4.69, as the Fed's decision to hold removed some of the dollar strength built up over the prior week. GBP/SGD and GBP/THB were both close to flat, at 1.72 and 44.92 respectively. The ringgit itself barely moved for a third straight week, steady through both the oil round trip and the Fed decision, notable resilience from a net energy importer that absorbed a 24%-on-the-month oil move without much currency stress.
What this week's moves mean for your portfolio
This was a week where the market did most of the reassuring on its own. The Fed held despite pricing that had built toward a hike, oil spiked above $90 and eased within days, and sterling and gilts both recovered from the previous week's unusual divergence. A globally diversified core built through Irish-domiciled accumulating UCITS funds needed a view on none of it, and the S&P and Nasdaq's gains this week came from strong company earnings, not from guessing which way the Gulf or the Fed would break.
Gold's fourth consecutive flat week deserves a plainer statement than it usually gets: a real, still-live Iran conflict (a tanker hit near Hormuz the same weekend a planned US strike was called off) produced no bid at all. Four weeks of that is a pattern, not noise. Gold still belongs in a portfolio as structural ballast, sized to do an unglamorous job across many outcomes. It has not been, and should not be treated as, insurance against this specific war.
On rates, the UK picture eased slightly this week: the 10-year gilt fell to 4.989% from the 5.05% close of the week before, still elevated by recent standards but off the two-month high. For anyone holding a defined benefit transfer decision, that direction matters less than the confirmed Budget date of 28 October, which is now the fixed point worth planning a decision around rather than the open-ended uncertainty of the past few weeks.
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