The Great Britain pound advanced against the US dollar and was almost flat versus the euro and the Japanese yen today. Positive retail sales data helped the currency to overcome the bearishness somewhat, though the current moves are not trend changing.
The British Retail Consortium Retail Sales Monitor demonstrated growth by 3.9 percent in January from a year ago. The report was mildly positive, but warned against being too optimistic as Helen Dickinson, Director General of British Retail Consortium, said:
January’s figures set 2014 off to a good start; however comparisons are against soft non-food sales in January 2013, which will not be the case in February. Given the underlying conditions, it remains to be seen how the trend for the rest of the year will pan out.
The sterling managed to log gains versus the greenback as traders are a little nervous ahead of today’s speech of Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen. The gains were not big, but it means that the pessimistic forecast has not been confirmed so far. Of course, there is almost a whole week ahead, and things may change dramatically during this time.
GBP/USD went up from 1.6400 to 1.6423 as of 5:11 GMT today. GBP/JPY traded at 167.93 after opening from 167.71 and EUR/GBP was at about 0.8322, not far from the opening level of 0.8318.
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