It’s a busy week for central bank meetings, with both the Bank of England and the European Central Bank due to hold theirs on Thursday. Whilst it is widely expected that the BoE will hike interest rates again, no policy changes are expected from the ECB.
The Bank of England will make its interest rate decision at lunchtime on Thursday and the markets will be listening for any ‘hawkish’ comments, including any signals that there are more hikes to come. This could be beneficial for the pound but equally, if the Bank’s actions and rhetoric do not meet expectations, then sterling could suffer.
The European Central Bank will be keeping an eye on data releases before its meeting, including German inflation figures today and PMI data on Thursday morning.
In the US, a busy week of economic data releases will conclude with Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday, which will give an indication of how the US economy performed in January.
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