GBP
 
The main news out from the UK on Friday was that retail sales for the UK missed
expectations. Month-on-month retail sales came in at -1.5% which is always
expected to be less than in December due to people spending more over the
Christmas period. There had been expectations of a fall of 1%.
 
The pound had its biggest weakly drop in 3 months on the back of this data,
rising unemployment rate and inflation slowed, slowing a bit of the momentum

GBP
 
The main news out from the UK on Friday was that retail sales for the UK missed
expectations. Month-on-month retail sales came in at -1.5% which is always
expected to be less than in December due to people spending more over the
Christmas period. There had been expectations of a fall of 1%.
 
The pound had its biggest weakly drop in 3 months on the back of this data,
rising unemployment rate and inflation slowed, slowing a bit of the momentum
that the UK economy is recovering fast.

USD

In
the USA data continued to disappoint with existing home sales missing
expectations with a fall of -5.1% compared to expectations of a fall 4.3%.
 
Today
 
The main news out today will be the inflation data from the Eurozone. CPI is
expected to fall from 0.8% to 0.7% year on year. If this does happen it will
only increase pressure on Draghi to introduce negative deposit rates. There
next policy meeting is on the 6th March where they will decide in this.
 
In the US today we have services data and manufacturing data out. Services are
set to improve over the month of February whilst manufacturing is set to fall
for February.

Outlook for the week

The
focus for the UK this week is the GDP figures out on Wednesday. Expectations
are the UK economy grew slower in the most recent quarter at 0.7% compared with
0.8% previously. Some of this can be attributed to the poor weather conditions
we have seen in the last couple of months.

Key Announcements:

10:00am – EUR – Consumer Price Index (Jan): Expected
to fall to 0.7%.

13:58pm – USD – Markit Services (USA): Expected to increase
to 56.9.

15:30pm – USD – Dallas Fed Manufacturing Business Index:
Expected to fall to 3.