Bank of England announcements today

Today sees the monthly announcement by the Bank of England of the UK’s interest rate and QE policies, as well as the quarterly inflation report. While there will be no changes to record-low interest rates, and unlikely any change to the £375bn QE (Quantitative Easing) policy, the quarterly inflation report is of more importance to the Pound. The report includes the central bank’s growth and inflation forecasts and an assessment of the health of the UK economy, so with the Brexit referendum due before the next quarterly report, we could well see some downbeat comments around economic uncertainty. Governor Mark Carney gives his press conference following the publication of all these figures and reports, at noon today and will very likely cause some movement for the Pound.

UK industry falls into recession
Official figures yesterday showed that the UK industrial sector has fallen back into recession for the third time in 8 years. Industrial production fell in the fourth quarter of 2015 and in Q1 2016, meaning that the beleaguered sector, which makes up 10% of the UK economy, is technically in recession. As reported recently, the UK economic outlook is finely balanced at the moment and any further poor figures will be likely to send the Pound lower.

Today apart from the Bank of England announcements we have very little major data due out; US imports & exports this afternoon and New Zealand retail sales this evening being the exceptions. Tomorrow however we have a raft of Eurozone data including headline GDP, bearing in mind the UK announcements today, if you are looking to secure an exchange rate, sooner rather than later could prove to be a wise decision.