Not a day of high drama for sterling yesterday, moving broadly sideways against both the euro and US dollar, despite better-than-expected manufacturing growth throughout July. The UK Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for July showed a marginal improvement on the forecast level, and improved upon the reading from June. However, this failed to prompt any resurgence in sterling, despite PMI figures from both Spain and the US coming in below expectations.
The day ahead promises to be light on fundamental data, although the construction PMI figure this morning will cause some interest. This traditionally strong figure is predicted to show a further increase to 58.6, although this data could have a muted impact ahead of the services PMI tomorrow and Thursday’s interest rate decision from the Bank of England (BoE).