Ahead of the latest policy decision from the Bank of England, the pound enjoyed another decent day in the market, rising against all 16 of the most actively trade currencies in the market.
Yesterday, Markit reported that the latest UK services sector purchasing managers index slipped slightly in February but showed capacity under pressure with levels of work outstanding just below the 17-year peak and the outlook for the sector at its most confident since September 2009.
The Markit service sector purchasing managers´ index (PMI) fell from a reading of 58.3 in January to 58.2 in February, the slowest pace on record since June 2013.
Meanwhile, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) reported that UK shop prices dropped for a 10th consecutive month in February, this time by 1.4% after a fall of 1% in January.
Attention now turns to the latest Bank of England (BoE) policy meeting. It is 5 years to the month that the BoE cut UK interest rates to their historic low figure of 0.5%.
Although analysts do not expect any change to either the headline rate of interest (to remain at 0.5%) or the size of the Quantitative Easing (QE) budget (to remain at £375 billion) most are divided as to the future direction of the BoE’s new flagship policy of ‘forward guidance’.
Meanwhile, today also sees the latest policy decision from the European Central Bank (ECB) as analysts continue to warn that the ECB is running the risk of following in the footsteps of the Bank of Japan (BOJ) in downplaying the threat of deflation in the area.
ECB President Mario Draghi recently admitted that inflation will remain "low for an extended, protracted period of time" but expects economic growth and a higher global inflation to bring prices up in the medium term.
The US dollar’s progress on safe haven flows over the last few days run out of steam yesterday as the markets rebounded on the calmer news out of the Ukraine and on worse than expected US economic data.
US private sector employers added just 139,000 new jobs in February, well below market expectations after much of the US suffered from severe winter weather conditions last month.
In a separate report, growth in the US services sector fell to a four-year low figure of 51.6 in February casting further doubt over the strength of the US economic recovery.
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