Pound Languishes on Monday, Waiting for Key Economic Releases

The Great Britain pound behaved similarly to the euro today, opening sharply lower but recovering a bit later. And similarly to the euro, the currency was waiting for macroeconomic releases over the rest of the week as the Monday’s economic calendar was empty.
Besides the Turkish crisis, which was affecting the whole Forex market, the sterling has its own negative factor in the form of Brexit concerns. It looked like chances for “no-deal Brexit” continued to increase as no progress in trade talks between the United Kingdom and the European Union was noticeable despite the looming deadline of March 2019.
As for economic data, this week’s releases will kick off with tomorrow’s employment data. Analysts predicted that the report will show stable wage inflation at 2.5% and unchanged unemployment rate of 4.2%. The Consumer Price Index will follow on Wednesday, and forecasters had promised acceleration of consumer inflation from 2.4% to 2.5%. And lastly, retail sales will be released on Thursday. Experts had forecast an increase of the indicator by 0.2%.
GBP/USD traded at about 1.2758 as of 18:30 GMT after closing at 1.2764 at the previous trading session and opening at 1.2745 today. GBP/JPY closed at 141.59 on Friday, and opened at 140.80 before trading at 141.31. EUR/GBP rose from 0.8921 to 0.8932 today after closing at 0.8930 on Friday.

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