UK housing prices fell by 0.8% in June, its largest drop in two years. Experts within the market did calm down speculations concerning the movement for the UK housing market. Since April and the change of stamp duty, it has shortened the demand of purchase power. This was highly anticipated, and housing prices are still at a higher point than the same time last year. Industry experts also believe this is a short-term effect and that the housing prices will continue to pick up soon. While the housing market has taken a step back, we can see that the UK stock market has shown a better-than-expected performance for the first half of 2025. Signals out of this, indicating optimism and we did see GBP take further advantage to the USD, up by 0.2% in this morning session.
Europe do release their core inflation and inflation levels at 10am. The recent strong performance from EUR, being the stronger currency – could see more confirmation. Expectations is that inflation levels will stay within their target region, cementing earlier comments last month from ECB that the price inflation has dampened and interest rates levels can be kept at bay – which potentially could lead to some additional steam for EUR strength.
Moving on to this afternoon, US do release ISM manufacturing figures and Jolt’s job openings. Starting off with manufacturing numbers, they are forecasted to change slightly for the better to its previous month. If we can see an inflated number to its expectations, we could see some recovery for an already pressured USD. While job openings are expected to fall slightly. The job market has been volatile in the US in recent months, and if we continue to see numbers falling – it could portrait tougher times ahead – which would signal the Federal Reserve to act rather than react and lower interest rates. This would negative to the USD.
GBP/EUR 1.1655 GBP/USD 1.3763 GBP/AED 5.0584
GBP/AUD 2.0900 GBP/CHF 1.0868 GBP/CAD 1.8718
GBP/NZD 2.2512 EUR/USD 1.1791 GBP/ZAR 24.2200