020 7898 0500Friday saw another day of mixed results for sterling, with it hitting a fresh seven-year high seen against the euro, while falling to a new one-week low against the US dollar in the afternoon as US consumer sentiment surged to an 11-year high. With markets still largely risk-averse following Thursday’s developments from the Swiss National Bank, it will be interesting to see how sterling and other currencies react during the course of the week to news flow and data releases.
UK data releases are focused in the second half of the week. On Wednesday we have the release of the latest Monetary Policy Committee meeting minutes. These are likely to reveal no change in voting patterns from the Committees members but the rhetoric will be very carefully scrutinized as to their views on the impact of lower inflation. On Wednesday we also have the data for Novembers Average Earnings and Unemployment released which are both expected to show an improvement on the previous month. Then on Friday the retail sales data is expected to show a decline of 0.6% for December when compared to the previous month and an overall growth rate of 3% for the year.
