Currency News

With the Greece situation smouldering in the background whilst it gets on top of its troublesome deficit there are lot of economic releases to make for an interesting day. We have already seen the Bank of Japan hold interest rates steady this morning. Later sees UK public sector net borrowing for January released at 09:30. With the already very large UK deficit this is one release that should be keenly watched and is likely to shape the sterling markets today.

Forecast is actually for an improvement in the figures with a reduction of £2.5 billion. However seeing the deficit expanded the previous month by £15.7 billion then this forecast from my view is a little on the optimistic side and we could see a reversal of the good gains the pound saw yesterday.

At the same time M4 money supply data is also released measuring all the money in circulation in the UK. The Bank of England will be hoping to see some growth in the figures and most are expecting a small increase of about 0.5%. However, with a growing belief that QE isn’t having the desired effect and the fact that the money supply actually shrunk by more than 1% last month then we could be in for a nasty surprise.

With two very important releases this morning, for anyone with any currency requirements it would be beneficial to be in close contact with your account manager should the market move substantially.

It is worth being aware that there are European consumer confidence figures released at 10:00. With a more fragile looking Euro with the problems surrounding Greece at the moment it has the potential to put a dampener on the euro.

Across the pond focus will be on Canada with a number of releases including Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January at 12.00. For the US it is Producer Price data and the Philadeplhia Fed Survey later this afternoon.