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Pound Sterling to US Dollar Exchange Rate Climbs Today after Soft Opening

Published: 3 Mar at 4 PM Tags: Pound Sterling, Dollar Exchange Rate, UK, Economy,

Trilogy of Weak CPI Stats Weakened GBP’s Chances Overall Today

While it has recorded a favourably sized gain against the US Dollar today, the Pound has elsewhere been in a state of decline overall. This has come from a recent spate of disheartening PMI printings for UK sectors in February.

The first was Tuesday’s manufacturing result, which slipped down from a previous 52.0 to touch on the edge of contraction at 50.8. Following on from this was Wednesday’s construction sector figure, which fell from 55 to 54.2. Finishing off this stream of negativity today have been the services and composite PMIs, which have respectively fallen from 55.6 to 52.7 and from 56.1 to 52.8.

With little impactful data due out before the end of the week, investors are left to glance forward to next week’s most notable UK economic announcements. On Wednesday, these will be made up of the January industrial and manufacturing production results, as well as the NIESR GDP estimate for February.

Towards the end of the week, the Pound is likely to be moved by Tuesday’s RICS house price balance for February, as well as Friday’s trade balance and construction output stats covering January.

US Dollar Hindered Today by Steady Stream of Damaging Domestic Data

While the Pound has been having a bad day relative to its major peers, the US Dollar has experienced a far worse one. Starting with claims this afternoon, the US economy has been on a steady downward slide of negativity, which has been so bad as to allow the softened Pound to take the lead.

Claims rose in late-February, the services PMI remained in contraction with a move from 49.8 to 49.7 and the composite PMI hit the threshold of contraction by slipping from 50.1 points to 50.

The only notable positive today for the ‘Buck’ has been the February non-manufacturing/services composite, which fell from 53.5 to 53.4 instead of dipping to a worse 53.1 as forecast.

Tomorrow may see the US Dollar execute a complete U-turn in terms of appeal, as the highly impactful February unemployment rate and change in non-farm payrolls figures are due out in the early afternoon. At the time of writing, forecasts were for a stagnation at 4.9% for unemployment and a difference of 151k to 193k for the payrolls outcome.

Monday will continue to bring important US economic announcements, with the afternoon featuring both the labor market conditions index change for February and a speech from Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer.
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