By Simon Eastman
Wednesday’s Budget proved positive for the pound as markets felt it wasn’t as bad as had previously been thought, coming across generally as positive by financial markets for delivering stability, despite some feeling it didn’t go far enough to ensure long term growth and the fact Reeves delivered a huge tax burden on the UK population.
Before the Budget was delivered officially by Rachel Reeves in Parliament, the Office for Budget Responsibility accidently published the report on its website, taking it down almost immediately but the cat was out of the bag and markets had reacted. Sterling dropped significantly across the board but steadied again quickly. As the Chancellor delivered her second budget, the pound started to rally and by the end of it was up almost a cent against the single currency and more than a cent against the US dollar.
Yesterday the pound remained buoyant, holding up well against both currencies amid the US market shutdown for Thanksgiving Day and a lack of any real data releases from elsewhere with just EU consumer confidence, business climate, and economic sentiment figures, all of which came in as expected.
Today we round off the week and November with a busier schedule, starting with German retail sales at 7am, followed by Swiss GDP at 8am. German unemployment rate is released at 8.55am followed by torrent of regional German data releases at 9am. Italian GDP also comes at 9am with a speech by ECB member Nagel at 10am, alongside Italian inflation. After lunch we get German inflation and Harmonised consumer prices at 1pm finishing off with Canadian GDP at 1.30pm. The US markets close early today being Black Friday, but we have no data releases at all from across the pond.
A busy day to end the moth and plenty to affect those with sterling in hand looking to buy their own Place in the Sun. So, whilst sterling remains buoyant ahead of what could be further negativity next week when the Bank of England meet to decide on interest rates, it could be worth speaking to a member of the team today, to help make your money go further.