A poor end to the week saw sterling fall further against the euro, and hit its lowest level since early July against the US dollar. With little significant data released, sterling found itself falling as investors continued to move against the currency following the Bank of England (BoE)’s ‘Super Thursday’ announcements which were less positive than hoped for.
A relatively quiet week lies ahead, with a limited flow of key data sets being released from the UK. Aside from some lagging retail sales data on Tuesday, the first major data is set to be released on Wednesday. Here we will see confirmation of average earnings throughout the past three months, alongside the current unemployment rate. Increasing average earnings have long been considered a key factor in the BoE’s interest rate decision and forecasts show this falling to 2.8% from the previous figure of 3.2%. The employment rate is expected to be steady at 5.6%. Any significant change from the forecast levels is likely to cause movement in the markets.