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Choppy? trading ahead of the Fed announcement

Published: 30 Jan at 11 AM Tags: Pound Sterling, Euro Exchange Rate, Currency Exchange, Euro Crisis, Rand Exchange Rate, UK, Economy,

Ahead of the latest policy announcement from the US Federal Reserve, the markets were choppy as both worldwide central banks and market makers positioned themselves ahead of the announcement.

On a ‘no data’ day in the UK, a speech by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney caught the market’s attention. Carney was speaking in Scotland and laid out the theoretical conditions which so-called Optimal Currency Areas must meet in order to be feasible in practice in reaction to comments from Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, to the effect that an independent Scotland would seek to maintain sterling as its currency.

Turning his attention to UK monetary policy, Carney indicated that "Although a few quarters of above-trend growth driven by household spending represent a good start, they aren’t sufficient. Even though employment is growing and unemployment has fallen – particularly so recently in Scotland – the recovery has some way to run before it would be appropriate to consider moving away from the emergency setting of monetary policy."

Meanwhile, the Nationwide reported that UK house prices have increased by 0.7% month-on-month in January to reach an average price of £176,491, a rise of 8.8% year to year.

January’s was the thirteenth consecutive monthly increase and Nationwide Chief Economist Robert Gardner highlighting how “encouraging” it was that the driving factor behind the upturn was demand from first-time buyers, describing them as the “lifeblood” of the housing market.

There was mixed data out of the euro zone yesterday. On the downside, the European Central Bank (ECB) reported that the annual rate of growth of the euro zone’s money supply (M3) eased from 1.6% over the 3 months to November to 1.3% over the three months ended in December.

Worse still, the annual growth rate of credit extended to the private sector was even more negative in December, coming in at -2.4% in December from an already poor figure of -1.6% in November.

Better news from Germany where the German Institute for Economic Research DIW Berlin reported that the country's economy has gotten off to a “solid start” to 2014.

“The German economy was able to maintain the pace of expansion that began last autumn and will likely accelerate at the beginning of this year,” said DIW Chief Economist Ferdinand Fichtner.

The turmoil in the emerging market economies continues. After the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey raised its overnight lending rate from 7.75% to 12% and the overnight borrowing rate from 3.5% to 8% after an emergency meeting on Tuesday, yesterday was the turn of South Africa's central bank to try and respond and stem the capital flows out of the country by unexpectedly raising its main policy rate by 50 basis points to 5.5%, so far with little to no effect.

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