020 7898 0500Another day, another underwhelming economic data release from the UK. GBPUSD tumbled following the release which showed the weakest pace of expansion in the manufacturing sector since November 2016. The figure had been expected to come in at 54.8 for April 2018, but it was actually 53.9.
The number of mortgage approvals in March fell to 62,914 which was marginally below expectations of 63,000. The difference is so negligible that little can be ascertained from the reading. Meanwhile, the Royal Bank of Scotland announced it is closing 162 branches with the loss of almost 800 jobs. There are competing theories over why the closures are happening, but RBS claims it is because their branches overlap too much.
Today we have the construction PMI for April which is forecasted to climb from 47 in March to 50.5. The sector suffered from the bad weather we experienced a couple of months ago, but there are no such excuses this time around. If the figure comes in below expectations we could see some further sterling weakness.
