The Great Britain pound surged against its major rivals today after comments of the nation’s central bank head Mark Carney who spoke about higher interest rates. On the negative side, today’s economic data from the United Kingdom was somewhat soft.
Carney said today that the time for an interest rate hike is coming closer. Yet he also warned that the increase will not be fast and big, and rates will not reach the historical levels. Still, the Bank of England is the only central bank of a developed nations except the Federal Reserve to consider tightening its monetary policy. And this is positive for the sterling.
At the same time, today’s data did not support the optimism. The Consumer Price Index showed no change in June from a year ago, matching expectations and slowing a bit from the previous month’s growth of 0.1 percent. Many other price indexes (including the core CPI) missed forecasts.
GBP/USD surged from 1.5486 to 1.5632 as of 20:35 GMT today. GBP/JPY leaped from 191.10 to 192.85. EUR/GBP tumbled from 0.7104 to 0.7039.
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