020 7898 0500A positive week for sterling saw it gain ground across the board, as fears over the uncertain result of the UK general election took a back seat to the Eurogroup meetings and poor economic data from the US. Sterling was particularly impressive against the US dollar hitting a fresh one-month high against the US dollar. European Union finance ministers openly vented their frustration towards the Greek government’s unwillingness to negotiate and at one stage sterling was able to push close to its recent one-month high against the euro before slipping back.
The week ahead sees a low volume of data releases from the UK, although each of these does promise to carry a lot of weight. Preliminary economic growth data for the first quarter will be released on Tuesday, and is expected to demonstrate further healthy growth for the UK. Following this, we will see mortgage approvals and consumer confidence data released ahead of the first of this month’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) figures being released on Friday from the manufacturing industry. Expectations are for a small improvement from last month and manufacturing continuing to be in an expansion phase.
