GDP Figures Released Today

Today brings this week’s big data release for the UK, with the next GDP announcement from the Office for National Statistics. The UK economy has been getting some good press recently with many data releases, including two key factors – GDP and unemployment; seemingly back on track and improving steadily. We are looking for a continuation of this today, with expectations of an increase year on year from 1.3% to 1.5% for UK economic growth.

The Pound is pretty well supported by the recent run of positive data, but a failure to achieve this goal on growth could easily see things slip back down from the recent highs against many of the major currencies.

In Europe we have a very quiet day, with retail sales figures already released in Spain, showing a surprising improvement and some consumer confidence figures and a bond auction in Germany later on.

The US has a bit more excitement with durable goods orders and a couple of employment releases and some mortgage data due.

Don’t expect too much from any of these though – I think it is fairly safe to say the big news today will come from the ONS…

As ever please keep in close touch with your CI account manager to be kept informed on what’s happening across the markets and how it will affect your upcoming currency requirement.