Sterling remains on back foot

The Pound continued its recent struggles on Friday, as official figures showed construction sector output fell by 4.3% in August, its sharpest drop since 2012. The UK trade deficit was also worse than expected at £3.3bn for August, with the Office for National Statistics warning that both would have a negative impact on UK growth. The construction sector is indicative of recent poor figures for the UK’s physical economy, including the much publicised closing of the Glencore steelworks in Redcar; continued bad news is only likely to hurt the Pound further.

The US Dollar however is a little cheaper for those of you sending money to the USA, as the Federal Reserve seems to have delayed interest rate rises for longer than had been expected.

Quiet week ahead for data

This week we have a relatively quiet week for economic news, so we might not see huge movements in exchange rates. There is virtually nothing of note today until the Bank of Canada’s Governor Poloz’s speech this evening, and tomorrow we have UK consumer inflation in the morning. UK unemployment follows on Wednesday. Looking abroad, for those of you following Euro rates, in the Eurozone we have economic sentiment tomorrow, industrial production on Wednesday, and important inflation figures on Friday. US retail sales on Wednesday and Australian unemployment on Thursday complete the main figures due out this week.