We had a pretty interesting week on markets with the Jackson Hole Symposium being a non event with no real policy change announced, the FOMC maintained that they will hike rates again if they feel it is necessary, but this will be entirely data-driven.
From Monday-Thursday Sterling actually performed pretty well on the week, with Pound to Euro rate reaching 1.1730 and the Pound to Dollar rate hitting 1.28. Unfortunately, on Friday morning, weak UK retail sales showed a fall of -1.2% which brought Sterling down slightly which also dampened forecasts slightly.
Pound Sterling is still climbing against The EUR after yesterday’s positive inflation release. Inflation dropped from 7.9% down to 6.8% in the year to July, with the main contributors being a drop in prices for; Energy, Petrol & Diesel, Milk, Bread & Cheese. Keeping inflation relatively high at the moment are the price increases in Hotels & Air Travel. It now looks even more certain that The Bank of England will raise interest rates again next month by 25 basis points, with the peak rate now forecast to reach 6%.
After positive UK GDP data, the Pound traded a little higher on Friday after a relatively disappointing performance over the week- the data showed that the UK economy has in fact still grown a little through this current cost of living crisis- for those of you in the UK this probably came as no surprises as the shopping centres etc are still extremely busy here- which is good news for the UK.
The US Dollar has edged lower this morning ahead of what is a key inflation release for The US. With headline CPI forecast to pick up slightly in July to 3.3%, while the core rate which excludes volatile food and energy prices is forecast to climb 4.8% on a year-on-year basis.
Last week the main event was the BoE interest rate hike, where the Central Bank raised interest rates by 25bps- but kept the stance of more hikes COULD happen if inflation were to go higher again, and that rates will stay high for at least a couple of years before any cuts are considered.
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With the latest stance from different central banks to slow down the tightening of monetary actions (pause or less interest rate hikes). There was no surprise yesterday when BoE raised interest rates by 25 basis points compared to its latest meeting in June of 50.
