The Pound tumbled to its lowest level in six-weeks against the US Dollar, a weekly low against the Euro and Australian Dollar and was down against several other major peers on Thursday as concerns over a slowdown in the UK’s housing market dampened demand for the currency.
Sterling began its decline in yesterday’s session after economists deemed the currency’s recent strong gains as being overdone.
Data showed that retail sales growth slowed and mortgage approvals fell.
As a result the Pound made its largest one day loss in four-months.
The report by the British Bankers Association prompted investors to scale back their expectations for an interest rate hike by the Bank of England later in the year.
Even comments made by BoE monetary policy committee member Martin Weale were not enough to offer support to the currency. Weale said yesterday that the Central Bank should raise rates “sooner rather than later”.
Weale added that the Bank should not wait too long to introduce rate increases as a delay would mean sharper and more painful tightening of monetary policy.
The US Dollar meanwhile made gains after continuing to find support from data released earlier in the week which showed that consumer confidence improved as forecast and durable goods orders increased unexpectedly.
The Euro and other currencies rose after taking advantage of the Pounds weakness.
Investors will now be looking ahead to this afternoon’s US GDP growth rate data for signs as to whether the world’s largest economy strengthened in the first quarter of the year.
A disappointing figure is likely to see the Pound regain some of its lost ground.
Pound (GBP) Exchange Rates
[table width=”100%” colwidth=”50|50|50|50|50″ colalign=”left|left|left|left|left”]
Currency, ,Currency,Rate ,
Pound Sterling,
,US Dollar,1.6735 ,
Pound Sterling,,Euro,1.2289 ,
Pound Sterling,,Australian Dollar,1.7997 ,
Pound Sterling,,New Zealand Dollar,1.9687 ,
US Dollar,,Pound Sterling,0.5975 ,
Euro,, Pound Sterling ,0.8137 ,
Australian Dollar,, Pound Sterling ,0.5559 ,
New Zealand Dollar,,Pound Sterling,0.5080 ,
[/table]
Comments are closed.