Sterling enters the week stronger against a few of its rivals, such as the Swiss franc and Japanese yen. The pound also maintains last week’s fresh gains against the euro.
It is a similar story for sterling against the US dollar, which boasts weekly gains of just over half a per cent.
Investors will have plenty economic releases to digest over the course of this week — all of which have the potential to increase volatility for many of our key currencies.
We’ve just seen the latest balance of trade data for Germany, which has revealed that the country’s trade surplus increased to €18.4bn in April. This was much higher than market expectations of €16bn and marked the widest trade surplus since the start of 2021.
Later today markets will see the ISM services PMI for the US. Dollar watchers will be keeping a close eye out for any pre, or post, data volatility.
Balance of trade for the US will be released later this week, as well as the eurozone’s GDP estimates and the Halifax housing price index in the UK.
The end of last week saw several equities end on a high. The French CAC 40 index climbed by nearly 2 per cent on Friday, while Canada’s S&P/TSX Composite index jumped 1 per cent higher. Read on for US equities.
Last week’s unemployment data for the US revealed America’s jobless rate soared by nearly 4 per cent, to a 7-month high in May.
Although this was above market expectations, and marked the highest rate since October last year, the jobless rate remained historically low overall pointing to a tight labour market in the US.
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