Macron Wins French Presidency

Last week markets were sideways trading for much of the time, with the pound ending the week one an upwards rally making half-cent gains against both the Euro and US Dollar ahead of the much anticipated final round of French voting.

Over the weekend the head to head race between Mme Le Pen and M Macron took place with Le Pen conceding defeat early into the vote count as it became clear she had lost the battle. She thanked her 11 million voters who backed her and vowed to contest the upcoming parliamentary polls. Macron gathered around 2/3 of the votes, pledging to unite the countries deep divisions, saying he understood the anger felt by people but stating he would defend the EU ideals, calling it “our common enterprise “.

Markets had already moved in the euro’s favour as the Asian markets opened, seeing the rates move down on GBP/EUR by two cents from Friday, to levels seen earlier last week. So we start the week near the bottom of the recent range as a Macron win was, as anticipated by the team at CI, taken as a positive for the single currency although, with some pricing in last week, we have seen a slight recovery as we start the European session.

So onto the week ahead and as France reflect on the elections they also have a Bank Holiday in celebration of VE Day. The most noteworthy releases are listed below:
Monday – Canadian house price data and US jobs figures after lunch.
Tuesday – Australian retail sales, Swiss unemployment, German import/exports data and trade balance, Australian budget (10 am) and New Zealand retail sales.
Wednesday – Australian consumer confidence, ECB Mario Draghi speech (12 pm), US monthly budget and New Zealand interest rate decision and press conference.
Thursday – Australian inflation, Swiss inflation, EU economic bulletin, UK industrial and manufacturing production, EU economic growth forecasts, BoE interest rate decision and press conference, quarterly inflation report and NIESR GDP estimate.
Friday – German inflation and GDP, EU industrial production, US inflation and retail sales.
A busy week, most notably for the antipodean countries so if you have a transfer to make down under, make sure you stay in touch with your broker. Couple that with the flurry of key announcements from the U.K on Thursday it may be prudent to get your transfer booked in before then to avoid any nasty surprises!