020 7898 0500The US Dollar continues to advance against sterling hitting levels last seen five years ago. This has been on the back of reasonable positive US news and data and worse than expected UK data and economic sentiment. The US dollar was also helped by the minutes of the last Federal Reserve meeting indicating that they expected to follow up their December increase with four similar increases in 2016.
Elsewhere the US dollar was impacted by worries over the Chinese economy, its falling stock market and the weakening renminbi. Safe haven currencies such as the Japanese yen and even the euro have benefitted. On the other hand emerging marketing currencies and commodity backed currencies have suffered.
Looking ahead, today we see the release of US Non-Farm Payroll and Unemployment Rate figures for December; this data may well cause some late afternoon movement, given the significance of the figures to future interest rate increases, to close out an ‘interesting’ week for Global Markets.
