With the sun shining day after day, the pound riding high against the euro and Smart’s local team, Fulham FC, newly-promoted to the Premier League, there’s certainly a spring in our step at the moment.
Sadly, I can’t offer any reliable prophesies on the future direction of either of those three. But the pundits at the major banks have been making forecasts, and we include their predictions on where the pound, dollar and euro will be over the next three and 12 months. Download our brand new Quarterly Forecast here.
For anyone embarking on a property buying trip, this looks like a tremendous time to lock in today’s exceptional GBP/EUR rate for the year ahead. You can do that with a call to your trader on 020 8003 4915.
The euro continues to feel the pressure, which has kept sterling well-supported above the 1.20 level. Against the dollar, sterling remains severely on the backfoot, close to its lowest level for 18 months. .
There are a range of factors contributing to the euro’s weakness, with Russia’s new offensive in the Ukrainian region of Donbas, the European Central Bank’s decision to maintain interest rates despite soaring inflation and the possibility of a Le Pen presidency in France being the main players.
For the pound, while data is currently thin on the ground, there will be PMI (a good measure of business optimism) and retail sales data on Friday. There are also speeches from the Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and ECB President Christine Lagarde, both of whom could discuss future interest rate hikes.
Any suggestion of an interest rate hike in the eurozone could help the euro. So do seriously think about locking in today’s rate, which is trading around 1% higher against the euro than this time last month.
