Poor economic data was weighing on the Great Britain pound recently, and today’s trading session was not different. Housing and trade data came out worse than was expected, suggesting the Britain’s recovery is losing steam. The Bank of England remained passive at today’s policy meeting.
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported that the House Price Balance was at 53 percent in June, below expected 55 percent, as demand for property dropped to the lowest since the beginning of 2013 after the Bank of England signaled that it is going to take measures for cooling the housing market. The trade balance demonstrated a deficit of £9.2 billion in May, above the predicted value of £9.0 billion.
The sterling dropped after the reports, though trimmed its losses by now. In fact, the UK currency was able to gain on the euro, which was dragged down by the crisis in Portugal’s banking system.
As was widely expected, the BoE left its monetary policy unchanged, keeping the Bank Rate at 0.5 percent and the asset purchase program at £375 billion.
GBP/USD dropped from 1.7157 to 1.7105 before trading at 1.7132 as of 21:11 GMT today. GBP/JPY was at about 173.61 following the drop from 174.36 to 172.95. EUR/GBP rallied from 0.7950 to 0.7968 but retreated to 0.7942 later.
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