EUR/GBP: Greece Fears Fail to Dent Euro to Sterling Exchange Rate

March 12, 2015 - Written by John Cameron

STORY LINK EUR/GBP: Greece Fears Fail to Dent Euro to Sterling Exchange Rate

The Pound Sterling to euro exchange rate peeled back from the multi-year highs which it posted during early trading yesterday during today’s trading session. GBP/EUR topped out at a fresh 7 ½ year high of 1.4257 a couple of hours after the London trading session got underway yesterday, but the pair had slumped to as low as 1.4027 a short time ago.

Pound to Euro Exchange Rate Drops Back

The move appeared to be technical in nature, rather than being driven by any distinct fundamental factors, with speculators shutting down their earlier positions and taking profit following the sharp early week move forward for the pair.

If anything, the fundamentals on the day today should have caused the shared currency to shed further support, if anything, with Greece’s new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sating a short time ago that, ‘we can no longer pretend that the country's public debt is viable and serviceable, when it stands at around 178%. It is absolutely vital for Greece to have its public debt restructured.’

The eurogroup of Finance Ministers are likely to be unimpressed by Tsipras’ comments – they are pushing Greece to stick to its tough austerity measures which came as a proviso for gaining it €240bn worth of bailout funding, but Athens appears to be pushing in the other direction completely.

The new hardline Greek government appears hell-bent on pushing for a large scale debt cancellation by their nation’s creditors and this fact is forecast to weigh down the euro for months to come.

UK Trade Figure Please

Elsewhere, today’s official government data revealed that the UK trade deficit significantly decreased from its standing in January to just £616m last month.

The news failed to help the Pound record gains against any of the major currencies. Tomorrow morning’s UK Construction Output data brings an opportunity for Sterling to re-establish itself in the markets – analysts forecast a healthy showing of 2.1% for the figure.

However, with last month’s counterpart figure showing at 5.5%, it appears unlikely that even this would be enough to see the Pound shake itself awake again.

Euro Exchange Rates Today:

The Pound to Euro conversion rate is -1.04 pct lower at 1.40109 GBP/EUR.
The US Dollar to Euro exchange rate is -0.69 pct lower with a conversion rate of 1 USD equals 0.94147 EUR.
The Swiss Franc to Euro exchange rate is -0.08 pct lower with a conversion rate of 1 CHF equals 0.93865 EUR.
The Canadian Dollar to Euro exchange rate today is converting -0.32 per cent lower at 0.74180 CAD/EUR.

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