Firstly let me apologise for not posting recently, I have been out of the office for the past few days. In today's post I will briefly cover what has impacted the GBP/USD cross and what we can expect over the next 24 hours.
Since my last update Sterling has continued it's recent revival against the dollar, exchange rates reached a high of $1.5380 this morning before dropping back over the course of trading. It means the pound has now gained around 3.75% against the dollar since the 9th July when rates were sitting at a low of $1.4830. To put the move into monetary terms, a £200,000 trade into dollars will now see you receive nearly $11,000 more compared to the same trade booked only two weeks ago. For more information on live market prices click here.
What has contributed to Sterling's gains against the dollar?
Earlier in the week figures released by the National Association of Realtors showed existing U.S home sales unexpectedly fell by around 1% in June, causing the dollar to fall against the pound and the euro. We also saw some more positive news for the UK which boosted the pounds performance, UK export activity climbed to the kind of levels we have not seen since the financial crisis started in 2008 and will add to the belief the UK economy could be turning a corner.
For the best rates of exchange click here.
So what can we expect for the rest of the week?
Tomorrow is a big day for the UK with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures for quarter two due to be released at 9.30 (BST). so what is GDP?
GDP is
probably one of the most important statistics for the UK as it captures
the state of the economy in one reading. if the GDP figures are positive for the previous three months, the
economy is growing. If it is negative it means the economy is contracting.
It is forecast that the UK economy grew by 0.6% for the months April to June and as we have seen in the past the GDP figures usually cause some movement in the currency markets. If the figures come in at the predicted rate or above we could see Sterling-dollar push back towards $1.55 but if the figures unexpectedly show contraction we could quite easily see rates fall back towards $1.51.
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