Currency News: UK daily forex news and forecasts

This morning’s UK inflation numbers showed a greater than anticipated drop in the rate of British price rises last month. The annualised CPI data for April showed a marked pullback in inflation from last month’s 3.5% to 3.0% this month, suggesting that the Bank of England may have scope to increase the £325bn which it has already allocated to its asset purchase programme. This is a factor which could weigh heavily on the...

Europe’s stock markets enjoyed a rare day of gains during yesterday’s session, with London’s FTSE 100 index closing up by 0.70%, Paris’s Cac 40 registering a positive move of 0.64% and Frankfurt’s Dax up by 0.95%. Many analysts have taken the view that the move higher marked a technical correction following last week’s sustained losses for equities. However, there appeared to be more to the forward move than this; it...

The Pound has performed poorly on the day following the release of disappointing UK housing market numbers from Rightmove, which showed that British property prices remained static last month. The UK economy badly needs its housing market to start pushing forward once again in order to kick-start an all-around improvement. At this stage, there appears little or no chance of this happening in the near-term, at least. Elsewhere,...

The ongoing crisis in the debt-stricken eurozone is increasingly resembling the final throes of the Roman empire, as the edifice of ‘political union’ crumbles in a wash of subterfuge and rumour. Market whispers abounded late on Friday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had urged Greek President Karolos Papoulias to hold a referendum on the troubled Hellenic state’s continuing membership of the eurozone alongside next...

The US Dollar started off the day on the front foot, sending the GBP USD exchange rate downwards towards the 1.5700 level. However, support for the Greenback has ebbed as the session progressed, as North American stocks broke into positive territory, thanks to the positive effect of Facebook’s IPO. Sterling also performed respectably on the day, in spite of no tier one UK data releases. The Pound appeared to benefit from the...

In global bond markets and in Europe’s debating chambers alike, the discord continues. Yesterday’s session saw the yields which debt-addled Iberian giant Spain pays on its government bills spiral to their highest levels for some time. The interest rate which the country is paying on its bonds with a maturity date of January 2015 jumped from a slightly steep 2.89% last month to a distinctly problematic 4.373% at yesterday’s...

The US DOLLAR has been the major winner on the day as institutional investors continue to shun equities and move into safe havens. This has taken the GBP USD exchange rate down to 1.5792. There could be further upside to come for the Greenback, as this afternoon’s US labour market data disappointed. This means that the USD heads into tomorrow on a NEUTRAL TO POSITIVE footing. It was another ‘bad news day’ for the EURO...

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 economy from the deepening eurozone debt crisis, observing that the region was ‘tearing...

The Bank of England slashed its forecast for UK growth for this year from 1.2% to 0.8% earlier today, hitting the POUND STERLING. With the UK tender riding high at the top if its recent range against a host of currencies, a broad move to the downside is possible, meaning that GBP heads towards tomorrow’s session on a NEUTRAL TO NEGATIVE footing. The EURO has suffered once again today, as fears increase that Greece may be...

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 impressive 0.5% in the first three months of this year – well ahead of expectations of a...