Rachel Reeves has been provided a helpful boost this morning with UK GDP showing modest growth in August of 0.1%. The Office for National Statistics also reported that GDP grew by 0.3% in the three months leading up to August which is a slight improvement on the 0.2% expectations.
This bit of relief has come at a great time for The Chancellor with her budget set to be released in just over 5 weeks, on the 26th of November. Despite raising taxes earlier in the year, she is still tasked with finding roughly £22Billion to keep within her own fiscal rules, which will potentially lead to further tax rises that we expect to weigh further on GBP as the economy continues to battle stubbornly high inflation as well as high interest rates.
We turn our attention to U.S Retail Sales later this afternoon with figures set to be released for September. Although markets are expecting a slight decline, The Chicago Federal Reserve stated yesterday they expect marginal increases of 0.2% which will be lower than initial expectations which is being attributed to higher import tariffs and a slowing jobs market which all in all is providing further uncertainty for the economy.
GBP/EUR 1.1512 GBP/USD 1.3425 GBP/AED 4.9341
GBP/AUD 2.0628 GBP/CHF 1.0692 GBP/CAD 1.8844
GBP/NZD 2.3389 EUR/USD 1.1647 GBP/ZAR 23.2841