The Great Britain pound fell against the US dollar and the euro today, erasing previous gains, as the retail sales report was even worse than pessimistic expectations. The currency managed to preserve gains versus the Japanese yen.
Retail sales dropped 1.5 percent in January from a month, compared to the forecast of 0.9 percent drop. It followed the particularly strong growth by 2.5 percent.
Yesterday, Confederation of British Industry released a manufacturing report and it was rather good. Anna Leach, CBI Head of Economic Analysis, said:
The manufacturing sector shows continued signs of improvement with demand high and steady and output growing strongly.
Growth is increasingly broad-based and firmsâ growth expectations are the highest for several months.
As the UK and global economies continue to strengthen over the coming months, we expect conditions to continue to improve for UK manufacturers and to increasingly feed through to business investment.
The pound was not particularly strong this week and today’s data just added to the downward momentum.
GBP/USD dropped from 1.6649 to 1.6621 as of 17:19 GMT today after rallying to 1.6724. GBP/JPY was up from 170.28 to 170.69, retreating from the daily maximum of 171.72. EUR/GBP climbed from 0.8237 to 0.8258, bouncing from 0.8215.
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