The Great Britain pound fell against its most-traded rivals during the Friday’s trading session as better-than-expected US nonfarm payrolls prompted market participants to trim long positions on other currencies.
The official report about US jobs market turned out to be rather good, with all indicators being solid. In particular, employment rose by 209,000 last month, exceeding the average forecast of 182,000. With that said, there were concerns that inflation does not rise fast enough to believe that the US economy is truly robust.
The sterling was already vulnerable after yesterday’s Bank of England policy meeting. In fact, with today’s drop the currency was heading to the worst two-day period since June 12. The EUR/GBP currency pair was a notable exception among GBP-crosses as the euro was hit by the news even harder than the pound, resulting in a rally of Britain’s currency against the currency of the eurozone.
GBP/USD dropped from 1.3136 to 1.3042 as of 17:28 GMT today. GBP/JPY was up from 144.53 to 144.96 intraday but pulled back to 144.44 as of now. EUR/GBP declined from 0.9031 to 0.9017 after reaching 0.9054 intraday — the highest level since October 10.
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