Jerome Powell’s comments yesterday have seen The US Dollar retreat slightly as bets climbed in favour of further interest rate cuts.
Markets are currently pricing in a 25 basis-point cut later this month, on the 29th of October as well as a further rate cut in December and another three rate cuts scheduled for 2026. Jerome Powell highlighted the weakening jobs market and inflation as concerns for The Federal Reserve to keep monitoring throughout the coming months. Sticking with The U.S, the release of the Beige Book could provide a significant outlook in the direction of the economy whilst the government shutdown continues.
The Euro has also gained some momentum, mainly supported by the French Government’s proposal to suspend controversial pension reforms. The political merry-go-round still continues in France, as PM Lecornu was reappointed on Friday after initially quitting earlier in the same week.
The pledge within his budget to delay pension reforms has seemingly won over the support of the Socialist Party who in-turn will vote against a No-Confidence vote. This now effectively paves the way for the passing of the budget which should bring further support for the Euro against other currency pairs.
Elsewhere, we start Thursday off with UK GDP figures for August which are set to show a slight improvement of 0.1% and could be crucial in providing some light at the end of the tunnel ahead of Chancellors Rachel Reeves budget in just over 5 weeks’ time.
GBP/EUR 1.1457 GBP/USD 1.3332 GBP/AED 4.9014
GBP/AUD 2.0463 GBP/CHF 1.0660 GBP/CAD 1.8730
GBP/NZD 2.3294 EUR/USD 1.1623 GBP/ZAR 23.0750