Highs And Lows For Sterling

Last week saw the pound end the month on a bit of a low across the board, reaching fresh lows against the euro and losing ground to the US dollar amongst others. The slide came after the GDP release the week before which had the markets over price in a better result than we saw (a rise to 0.6% growth) so following the event, like often is the case, the markets corrected themselves.

The beginning of August was the turning point, with Bank of England and ECB interest rate decisions on the Thursday and FED interest rate decision the evening before. The no change policy was stuck too for all three but this gave the pound some momentum managing to claw back some of its previous day’s losses ending the week strongly. The markets open this morning with the pound making early gains against all the majors, so will this continue?

The weeks data starts off with a raft of PMI data for the UK and EU along with plenty more to affect the markets.

Monday

UK and EU Services PMI
EU Retail sales
US Manufacturing PMI

Tuesday

AUD House price index
AUD Interest rate decision
AUD Trade balance
UK Industrial and Manufacturing production
UK NEISR GDP estimate
US Trade balance

Wednesday

UK Inflation report and speech by Mark Carney
CAD PMI

Thursday

AUD Employment data
ECB Monthly report

Friday

UK Trade balance
CAD Unemployment rate

Above includes many key releases so be aware if you have a currency purchase to make concerning any of the above that we are likely to see a fair bit of volatility. Mark Carney’s first inflation report mid week is sure to be interesting so make sure to stay in touch with the team at Currency Index to avoid getting caught out when sending money abroad.