Sterling continued to strengthen on Monday, as investors spent a relatively quiet afternoon eyeing Thursday’s Bank of England rate vote.
Cable climbed 0.4%, sporadically crossing $1.318, while against the euro the pound jumped 0.3%, lifting the currency to a fresh 4 week high of around €1.135. Though an interest rate rise on Thursday is far from certain, today’s trading seems to suggest investors think we might be in for the first hike in a decade.
This growth helped keep the FTSE in the red, though the index did manage to halve its lunchtime losses to just 10 or so points. That’s thanks to healthy gains from BP (LON:BP) (which reports tomorrow) and Shell (LON:RDSa) – Brent Crude is now trading at its best price since 2015 – and a reversal of losses in the mining sector countering the Barclays (LON:BARC) downgrade-inspired, Berkeley Group (LON:BKGH) led decline by the index’s housebuilders.
While the US is enveloped in its latest bout of political drama, with former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort handing himself over to the FBI for charges including ‘conspiracy against the United States’, the Dow Jones got off to a pretty sleep start. The index dipped 0.1% after the bell, a move that still leaves the Dow a sneeze away from a fresh record peak.
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