Sterling gains consolidated

Thursday was a fairly quiet day for sterling as it consolidated after the GDP on Wednesday which saw the pound make gains across the board. There was a lot of data releases out to move the markets but with a mixed bag from all sides they seemed to have little effect. German GDP came out as expected, while their unemployment rate posted 9000 worse than forecast. European money supply was down, consumer confidence was massively up, as was economic sentiment, industrial confidence and services sentiment. These decent figures helped the euro to make some gains back against the losses on Wednesday but with confidence high in the pound the gains were limited. Next out was the Bank of England’s economic report, delivered by Mark Carney. His main comments were surrounding the Funding for Lending scheme which was introduced to help support borrowing for house buyers, which after concerns that the lending will cause a housing price bubble and possible subsequent crash, the governor announced that the money would now be filtered through to small business instead. This didn’t hurt sterling too much as the main casualty was house building companies who saw their stock price value slump. This morning we come in with the pound faltering across most currencies, having dropped overnight during Asian trading. Pound/euro trading is still holding up near the resistance level having briefly breached it yesterday. It’s unlikely we will see this push above so with current rates as good as they’ve been in months, it’s worth locking in if you have as European transfer to make in the coming weeks. December is notoriously flat for trading and with end of year winding up of positions we generally see the rates come down. This morning we have already had the Gfk consumer confidence survey results which posted slightly lower than forecast, along with German retail sales which were lower than expected. The UK has money lending and mortgage approval figures, EU inflation data and unemployment rate and finally Canadian GDP figures at lunchtime. Plenty to move the market data wise today and last trading day of November so we could see some profit taking this afternoon. Stay ahead of the game and keep in touch with the team here at Currency Index.