USD/GBP Rate & Comments for 30th September 2010

USD/GBP - 1.585

Sterling fell again against the euro yesterday after Tuesday’s downbeat comments by a key Bank of England policy maker left sterling under severe pressure from investors. Sterling dropped to a 4 month low of 1.1590/£1 as markets became more and more concerned over the prospect of further Quantitative Easing. Sterling held steady against the US dollar. In a speech on Tuesday, Monetary Policy Committee member Adam Posen said that the central bank should start pumping more money into the economy in order to avoid a prolonged slump of the sort that Japan saw in the 1990’s. These comments certainly came as a surprise and saw sterling follow the US dollar down against the euro. Despite dropping a long way on Tuesday, poor UK data saw sterling drop further. The pace of service sector activity came in worse than expected and mortgage approvals stayed flat. In terms of data, there is key house price data which could see sterling drop even further if this dents the UK’s prospects. Call in now to speak to one of the team and prevent yourself from losing out further.

In the USA, the US dollar continued to suffer yesterday – especially against the euro - as concerns remained over further Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve. This is widely expected to be announced at the end of the Fed’s next meeting on November 2-3rd. There was no real data released yesterday, but last night there was an interesting Bill passing through the US Senate. The house is expected to enact a law that treats the artificially weak Chinese exchange rate as a subsidy and impose duties on goods imported from China to remove the artificially unfair advantage that the Chinese yuan currently enjoys in the global market. Given that most Chinese goods brought to the UK are paid for in US dollars, this could have far reaching consequences. Speak to one of the research team about what effect this is likely to have.

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