An indicator of who won last night's US presidential debate came south of the border, where the Mexican peso gained 2% against the US dollar. While Mexican pesos are normally used as a proxy for Latin American currencies which are much harder to trade and less liquid, our sources in Mexico attribute the rise in the peso entirely to Donald Trump's poor performance last night.

In fact today has been full of surprising foreign exchange moves.

The optimistic interpretation of the impact on Britain of the referendum vote to leave the European Union was undermined when the September CBI retail sales survey showed a substantial 8% drop,whereas analysts had expected an 8% rise. This marks of a lack of consumer confidence. Prior retail data seemed to show that people were spending more at the store, but the figures may have been distorted by many tourists heading to stay (and shop) in Britain after the post-vote fall in sterling. The pound fell further today, to under $1.30 again. Initially this boosted London shares (along with the debate results) but then the index dropped over renewed oil price drops.

The Japanese yen also dropped but then recovered.

Also in the doghouse is the loony, at a 6-month low, also over a drop in consumer confidence indicators. During the Asian market day, it took C$1.3275 to buy a greenback, but in European trading the Canadian currency recovered somewhat. US retail sales data are due this afternoon and may add to the gloom.

We invest globally and normally do not hedge currencies, although some of the funds we use for diversification may hedge, particularly if they are fixed-income ones. I only use currency hedges when I am sure which way the world movement is going, and at present I have no such insights.

When their currencies fall, foreign large exporter companies can sell more which creates a “natural hedge” against moderate exchange rate moves, of the sort which we are seeing now in the industrial world. They can reflect complex strategies in the foreign exchange markets over negative rates in Europe and Japan which boost demand for US dollars.

Then too under-zero rates create problems for banks in general, or now, Deutsche Bank in particular.

I did a round robin visit to British, German, French, and Spanish newspaper websites this morning, and they almost unanimously ranked Hillary Clinton as the winner of the last night's debate. But of course international journalists (including me) are naturally more likely to support free trade, an unhampered Fed, immigration, fairer taxes, and controls on healthcare cost.