Round up of currency news this week

Quite surprisingly the last few days have seen the previously struggling Euro make some gains back against both the Pound and the US Dollar. This was in part due to a failure to meet expectations by the other majors on various data releases, but also due to the slightly more positive feeling the markets had towards the Euro, after Mario Draghi spoke last week and delayed any action to stimulate the Eurozone – while stimulus measures would help the Eurozone economy, if in the format of the expected QE, they will weaken the Euro simply due to dilution.

This trend was bucked yesterday though with the ECB doing the next round of LTRO, or Long Term Refinancing Operation. This is a programme to provide liquidity to Eurozone banks to avoid the need for them to lend to each other and involve themselves in other credit arrangements. The take up was relatively small though – with only €130bn being requesed, and the markets took this as an indication that behind the scenes the ECB’s movement towards Quantitative Easing is gaining pace.

As a result the Euro lost much of its gains, and became almost a cent cheaper to buy for those buying from Sterling.

Today sees an almost complete absence of key data with nothing more exciting than Eurozone industrial production and employment numbers and US PPI due out.

In other news it was announced yesterday that from August 2015 the Bank of England will release its monthly policy statement at the same time as announcing the minutes from the policy meeting, rather than splitting the two announcements across two weeks. The aim is to provide clearer information to the markets, and will bring the Bank of England more in line with how the ECB make their announcements.

Here at Currency Index we provide clear, jargon free information on what is happening on the markets and the likely impact on your upcoming currency purchase, so make sure you stay in close contact with your account manager to be kept informed of exactly what is going on.