Quiet day for data

So for those cricket fans amongst you we saw a sterling fight back by the Aussies in first Ashes Test yesterday and over the past 24 hours we have also seen both the pound and euro gain some ground against what has been in recent weeks a very buoyant dollar. Following comments on Wednesday evening by FED chairman Ben Bernanke we saw a 2% swing in both EUR/USD and GBP/USD rates as he suggested that more evidence was required before the US broke away from their current QE policy. Unfortunately the news meant that the pound also suffered against the euro however throughout the day yesterday it gradually regained some of the ground it lost in Wednesday’s overnight trading.

On the whole it has been a fairly quiet week in terms of data release with the big UK event of the week (estimate of Q2 GDP) proving to be a non-event with the reading coming in as expected at 0.6%. Having said that as our regular readers will know, time after time the markets move on the back of comments made by members of banking committees and this week has been no different. It just goes to show that gambling on the markets is a risky game a utilising all the tools we have here at Currency Index will help you avoid getting anything wrong. On Wednesday evening a client wanting to buy or sell USD could have place a stop or limit order into the market and woken up Wednesday morning very happy. An overnight movement of 2% is difficult to predict and impossible to act on unless you use such orders. One lucky client of ours had a stop loss order in place for selling $500,000 and they achieved over £5,500 more than they would have done if trading on the Thursday morning !!!

Today we have a raft of fairly insignificant European data followed by US consumer sentiment this after. We could see some end of week swings in the market this afternoon as traders unwind their weekly positions. If you have an imminent requirement then please contact your account manager here at Currency Index to see how we can help you achieve the best possible exchange rate.