The pound weakened to its lowest level in over a week against the dollar yesterday and was largely unchanged against the euro. This is mostly due to ongoing dollar strength since the Federal Reserve announced a shift in policy during its last meeting.
In contrast to this, the Bank of England kept stimulus measures and interest rates the same at its meeting last week, which has caused sterling to be on the backfoot.
Data released yesterday revealed that UK factories produced 54,962 cars in May 2021, up from just 5,314 a year ago when pandemic restrictions hit manufacturing. However, the performance was still 52.6% below the May 2019 output. House price figures revealed that prices are increasing at their fastest rate since 2004.
This morning, GDP figures for the UK were released showing a 1.6% decline quarter-on-quarter and a 6.1% decline year-on-year. There were declines in both household consumption and business investment as a result of COVID-19 restrictions.
