The Quiet Before The Storm

Tuesday was a quiet day for the currency markets as traders eased back in following the Easter weekend. We had no UK data to contend with and only some very low key releases from the EU and US. The pound managed to continue its strong form we saw last week making some small gains across the board, showing sentiment is still with the pound for now at least.

Today is a different story though as we have a raft of data releases to affect the rates for sending money abroad. Overnight we had inflation data from Australia which came out below forecast at 2.6 percent compared to 2.9 percent. Coupled with some poor Chinese data which often affects currencies in the Asian Pacific region, the Aussie spiked weaker against sterling by a cent and a half, making transferring money to Australia a fair amount cheaper.

We now look forward to EU Markit PMI figures, followed closely by the minutes from this month’s Bank of England policy meeting. We expect unanimous votes to hold asset purchase and interest rates as they were but any different stance and we are likely to see sterling badly affected. We also have the public sector borrowing figure for March.

Canadian retail sales come out at lunchtime, which although not very key, could help the Loonie claw back some of its losses it suffered recently or indeed compound it further should the figure come out much worse than forecast. Anyone sending money to Canada should stay in touch with the CI team to keep informed. US new home sales data comes early afternoon and the New Zealand central bank release their interest rate decision at 9pm.