020 7898 0500It was an odd week for UK economic data to be honest, where negatives weren’t quite as grey as they could have been and positives didn’t shine all that brightly. Wage growth grew, but only by 2.2% (far behind inflation), while on an annual basis, UK retail sales declined by 0.3% against an expectation of -0.6%. The pound strengthened against the dollar and moved sideways against the euro.
This week is a fairly busy one for UK economic data, although there is nothing of note today. Tomorrow we will see the public sector net borrowing and CBI industrial trends orders, while the BoE Financial Policy Committee are scheduled to meet on Wednesday. Thursday sees the release of Gross Domestic Product growth and on Friday we’ll get the mortgage approvals.
The chart below shows sterling’s performance against the US dollar over the last month. As you can see, after the pound fell off a cliff following the Bank of England’s recent interest rate rise, it is slowly headed back to where it was before. It really does show how volatile currency pairings can be in a short space of time.
