020 7898 0500Sterling soared across the board on Friday, hitting fresh one-month highs against both the euro and US dollar thanks to a growing belief that the campaign for the UK to remain within the EU is gathering momentum. Whether or not that belief is misplaced only time will tell.
The week ahead sees a limited flow of UK economic data with only the release of BBA mortgage approvals tomorrow to provide any interest at least until Wednesday. Then, we have the release of preliminary UK economic growth figures for the first quarter of 2016; these are forecast to show a slowdown to 0.4% growth [final quarter of 2015: 0.6%]. Growth year on year is also forecast to slip to 2.0% [2.1% last year] Preliminary economic growth is the earliest data that is released, and therefore often has the greatest impact of these releases and irrespective of the latest updates on the referendum we could see sterling struggle if the data doesn’t meet expectations.
Following this, there is unlikely to be much more interest from the UK in terms of economic data and therefore the outcome of the central bank meetings in the US and Japan could have significant influence on exchange rates in the second half of the week.
If you are looking to buy or sell sterling, we suggest contacting your trader now for live rates, news and currency-purchasing strategies.
