Euro Back In Favour

With little UK data out it was data released across Europe that helped push the euro higher and there also seemed to be a general ‘feel good factor’ within the financial markets which meant investors piled into riskier assets, of which the euro is one of them.

The British Retail Consortium has this morning released figures for the all important Xmas period retail activity. Data shows that sales were up 1.5% (below inflation) which is particularly disappointing for such a busy time of the year. Having said that online sales were up a huge 18% so there is a real mixed bag here and we will need to wait until official retail sales are released later in the month to get a true reflection of the retail market over the festive period…….I know I bought my wife a lot of presents so I can feel happy that I contributed !!

Today is again another quiet day for UK data releases and a busy one for Europe. We have consumer confidence, retail sales and unemployment figures all out this morning for the eurozone so this could be a chance for the pound to regain yesterday’s losses. Having said that if you are in need of currency soon do speak to your account manager here at Currency Index as positive data this morning could see the pound make further losses.