Sterling kicked off the first trading day of 2018 by climbing to a three-month high against the dollar this morning as the greenback weakened broadly, ahead of a survey of Britain’s manufacturing sector.
The pound, which in 2017 recorded its best annual performance against the dollar since 2009, with an almost 10 percent rise, added to those today.
Many currency analysts expect the pound could continue this bullish run and test the 1.40 level.
As always, the course of Brexit negotiations will be important and developments in the coming weeks will be important given we expect a transition deal to be struck quickly.
Brexit minister David Davis said that Britain wants to include financial services in a trade deal with the European Union which covers a full sweep of economic areas and that any deal that left out the sector would be “cherry-picking”.