Delayed UK retail sales that were supposed to be released two weeks back, came out this morning. Initially forecasted at a level of 0.2%, we did see an uplift to 0.6%. The question now is whether we can see this as a positive level, as previous month was set at 0.9% and then downgraded this morning to 0.3%. Once again ONS (Office for National Statistics) are under pressure. The reason behind its delay of retail sales being released this morning was concerns of correct reading metrics. Now ONS has admitted that the first half of 2025 has been amended after incorrect data and therefor last month has also been changed. In the morning session we can notice uncertainty from investors/traders as retail sales did improve, but we have not seen much movement for GBP to its peers.
As it’s the first Friday of the month, we do have non-farm payroll being released in the start of the afternoon. Earlier in the week we saw US job data fall short on Wednesday when ADP figures were released. Non-farm payroll is the most weighted labour metric for the US and creates volatility to markets when it comes out well above or below forecasting for USD-pairs. Ahead of today’s release expectations is an uplift of 2k jobs from its previous month of 73k created jobs to now 75k. If we zoom out and look at the last several months readings, we can see that new created jobs in the US are coming down. With Federal Reserve holding their interest rate decision within the next two weeks, today’s data will be watched closely.
GBP/EUR 1.1519 GBP/USD 1.3467 GBP/AED 4.9484
GBP/AUD 2.0588 GBP/CHF 1.0814 GBP/CAD 1.8585
GBP/NZD 2.2929 EUR/USD 1.1677 GBP/ZAR 23.8364