Sterling exchange rates have continues to drift to kick start a new trading week, as the cost of living crisis dominates headlines across UK media.
With today being an important day for UK politics as we see the announcement of the winner in the Conservative party leadership contest, and ultimately who will be the new Prime Minister, they will almost instantaneously have to announce how they plan to combat what appears to be an extremely challenging winter for the majority of households and businesses.
It is widely expected that Liz Truss will be announced later today at 12:30 and all eyes from investors and speculators will be on her plans to keep people and certain business’s afloat as we face a difficult winter of rising costs, forced closures of retailers, and people simply having to choose between food on the table or heating the house.
This is still clearly impacting the value of Sterling exchange rates, and many feel that it will continue to impact them in the coming months too.
Capital Economics, a well-known independent economic research business has some fairly negative predictions out there for the pound, with expectations that Sterling will lose roughly 5% on a trade-weighted basis in the coming months. This essentially means they expect weakness against most majors, a 5% drop for GBP/EUR or GBP/USD would see Sterling drop below 1.10 as an example, so although it feels low now, if these predictions come true then there may be much further to fall.
It has to be said that the markets can change very quickly and forecasts can be wrong, so it is key to retain the view that things could change, however economic data in the States and the Eurozone is way outperforming the U.K at present, and the drop off in the pound only adds fuel to the fire.
A lower pound means everything imported costs more, from food to gas prices, the lower it drops the higher inflation rises and the more people are paying for goods and services, I personally am noticing costs for almost everything rising and that will be down to many things, but also a lower pound pushing up fuel, transportation, energy and packaging costs for basically every product on our shelves.
The week ahead
We have the news on the new PM later this morning to kick start the week, and as mentioned previously I believe the plans laid out off the back of that could be key for the pound in the early stages of the week.
For those with an interest in Australian or Canadian Dollars, we have the RBA interest rate decision tonight and the Bank of Canada later this week on Wednesday.
Euro followers will note growth figures on Wednesday and more importantly the European Central Bank interest rate decision on Thursday, where the market expects an aggressive 75 basis points hike in interest rates, any change to this could cause immediate volatility, and the wording used regarding future fiscal policy in the press conference after is also likely to set the tone for how the Euro performs over the rest of the trading week.
Currency exchange to carry out and worried about market movements?
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