020 7898 0500On Friday, the pound retraced some of its recent losses against the euro and dollar to end the week on a high. The moves against the dollar came as a result of Trump’s comments on Fed policy, where he lamented its rate hikes. It is clear that Trump favours a weak dollar and believes that if rates continue to rise then it would weaken the US economy.
The only release of note on Friday was the public sector net borrowing figures for June, which showed that the UK government posted a total net borrowing deficit of £4.53 billion compared with £4.629 a year earlier. The deficit was wider than the £3.5 billion the markets had expected, but overall, public borrowing hit its lowest mark for 11 years. Britain borrowed a total of £5.4 billion to balance the books last month, which was £800 million less than the same month last year. This could encourage the government to cut taxes or boost spending in the autumn Budget.
Today is fairly quiet for UK economic data, but tomorrow we will see CBI industrial trends orders for June, while Wednesday sees finance mortgage approvals for June.
