Renewed French political crisis has allowed for further Sterling gains against the Euro as French prime minister is set to fall on the 8th of September once confidence vote takes place on his government. Spiralling debt in the country has raised concerns amongst investors about the possibilities of further lending to the government.
More importantly, yields on French debt are rising considerably faster than anywhere else in Europe and crucially set to surpass debt levels of Italy. If the cost of French debt was to rise further, Euro losses could become more substantial. Current national debt in France sits at €3.3billion which now places it as the third highest in the Euro-Zone, behind only Italy and Greece.
The backdrop from this indicates more volatility as a new round of elections potentially bring a period of uncertainty for one of the biggest economies in Europe.
Keeping with Europe, Consumer Confidence and Economic Sentiment figures for August are released later this morning. Consumer confidence seems set to stay stable, whilst economic sentiment could bring some relief for The Euro.
This afternoon we have GDP figures released for The U.S, with figures suggesting slight economic growth of 0.1%. If the release correlates projections or even beats these then we could see some US Dollar gains against other currency pairs. We then round off the day with weekly jobs data which the Federal Reserve are now treating as one of their main factors when deciding on their next interest rate moves.
GBP/EUR 1.1577 GBP/USD 1.3475 GBP/AED 4.9520
GBP/AUD 2.0705 GBP/CHF 1.0802 GBP/CAD 1.8572
GBP/NZD 2.3015 EUR/USD 1.1623 GBP/ZAR 23.8353