Retail Sales Push GBP higher.

After a week in the beautiful cities of Porto and Braga, I am now back in the UK and in the office- hopefully my great team have been able to take care of you all. The major story last week was the Bank of England making it very clear that they are preparing for a rate cut in August, this caused Sterling rates to sell off a little on Thursday, the losses were then pared on Friday following positive retail sales out of the UK- which has levelled rates off again. As we enter the last week of June, the big story will be the UK election next week, it is worth now looking at what polls are predicting as that is what the market will be responding to until the result comes out, but currently many are pointing to a Labour majority.

This week we do not have much UK data of importance, so we will be looking at other releases to determine how the markets will perform this week- one major point to note is that we will see end-of-month and end-of-quarter flows from Thursday into Fridav which will probably cause some volatility.

The main events to watch for this week are as follows;

• Germany IFO Business climate (Monday)


• Canada Inflation Rate (Tuesday)


• U.S CB Consumer confidence (Tuesday)


• EU Consumer Confidence (Wednesday)


• US Durable Goods orders and GDP Growth rate (Thursday)


• UK GDP Growth Rate (Friday)


• U.S PCE Price index (Friday)

As you can see, for the UK, Friday's GDP number will be the main event, so I expect to see the market move more from news than economic data this week. If you would like more information on a particular currency pair or guidance going into the new month/quarter, please don't hesitate to contact me.