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GBP: Beast from the East puts shoppers off

By Ricky Bean April 20th, 2018

UK retail sales in March were extremely disappointing and missed forecast by quite some distance. They had been expected to decline but by nowhere near as much as they did. Month-on-month, they fell by 1.2% when a 0.5% drop had been forecast. This follows on from a 0.8% increase in February which makes the reading all the more stark.

There is some comfort in the fact that bad weather is the chief reason for the fall and now we are heading into the warmer months, the figure should pick up in due course.

Sterling held steady against the dollar following the previous day’s plummet but it lost some ground against the euro. There are no releases today but the Bank of England’s Michael Saunders is set to deliver a speech later this morning and it will be interesting to see whether he mentions the recent surprise fall in inflation.

 

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