It’s been quite the week for sterling – after hitting a bevy of highs on Monday, the currency has since seen its confidence eroded by a string of dovish updates.
First was Tuesday’s improving, but lower than forecast, wage growth numbers; next Wednesday’s one-year low inflation reading; and then on Thursday, March’s ‘Beast from the East’-blighted retail sales. The culmination of this unhappy hat-trick came as Mark Carney put the boot in on Thursday night, telling the BBC that he didn’t want to get ‘too focused on the precise timing’ of the next Bank of England interest rate rise, seemingly highlighting the recent ‘mixed data’ as a potential reason why the expected May hike may not materialise.
All this has left the pound in a foul mood. Though it is only down 0.2% against the dollar and 0.3% against the euro, those losses follow on from an ugly collapse on Thursday evening. Cable, then, is back below $1.405, its worst price in a fortnight having been at a $1.435-teasing near 2 year peak on Monday; as for against its single currency rival, sterling is the wrong side of €1.138, a level not seen in a month.
Obviously the FTSE, which has seen its tempestuous relationship with the pound return this week, was pretty damn pleased at sterling’s softening. The UK index jumped around half a percent after the bell, sending it to a fresh 11 week peak of 7360.
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