Daily Currency Updates

The Bank of England Governor Mervyn King called an instant halt to the Pound’s recent bull-run in the currency markets during yesterday’s session, when he announced that the Bank was slashing its UK growth forecast for 2012 by a third, from the previous 1.2% to a paltry 0.8%. King blamed the announcement on the threat to the British...

Yesterday morning’s European session offered a timely reminder of why a significant proportion of the global investment community are still willing to hold euro-denominated assets, when the region’s leading economic power, Germany, released its latest GDP growth data. The figures revealed that German economic activity had expanded by an...

The ongoing soap opera which is the Greek debt crisis took several twists and turns during yesterday’s session in the markets. The most significant development on the day came in the form of an announcement from the leaders of the ‘socialist light’ Democratic Left party which revealed that they would not enter into any coalition...

Friday’s Asian session saw the release of data which provided further evidence that the Chinese economy is expanding at a slower pace. The annualised Industrial Production figure registered at 9.3%, versus an anticipated 12.2%. This showing was the lowest level that Chinese industrial output had expended by for some three years. Chinese...

Sterling received a significant boost in the middle part of yesterday’s session, as the Bank of England announced that it would not be altering the UK’s monetary policy. The gains which followed the statement suggested that a significant proportion of market participants had been factoring-in an extension to the Bank’s existing £325bn...

Yesterday’s afternoon session brought a rare piece of good news for the euro when Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Greece’s extreme left wing Syriza bloc, admitted defeat in his attempt to forge an anti-bail-out coalition government. Tsipras stated that his ‘dream of a left-wing government’ would not be coming to fruition, as talks with...

The precarious political situation in Greece informed price action in the currency markets during yesterday’s session, sending the value of the high-yielders and commodity currencies tumbling. Not surprisingly, the euro didn’t fare too well either. To recap, the story so far has seen Greece build up unmanageable debts which it has no...

Political upheaval in mainland Europe has had a dramatic effect on the currency markets since they re-opened on Sunday night. The French people voted in favour of Francois Hollande to be their new head of state on Sunday, leaving the country’s erstwhile President Nicolas Sarkozy adrift in the political wilderness. The Socialist candidate...

As ever, the future direction of interest rates was never far from the minds of currency market participants during yesterday’s session. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s press conference, which followed the ECB’s announcement that it is maintaining its key lending rate at 1.00%, was generally judged to have been...

The evidence is mounting that the eurozone’s sovereign debt problems are starting to have a pronounced adverse effect on the continental European economy. A slew of disappointing European data releases yesterday morning added to this feeling, as firstly German unemployment figures and then last month’s whole-of-eurozone PMI Manufacturing...