Pound Sterling Plummets after PM May Sparks ?Hard Brexit? Fears

Published: 9 Jan at 4 PM Tags: Euro, Dollar, Pound Sterling, America, UK, Eurozone, Australian Dollar, New Zealand Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Russia,

Pound Sterling (GBP)
Demand for the Pound has nosedived today, with Sterling diving across the board due to comments made over the weekend by Theresa May.
Speaking on Sky, the Prime Minister offered vague and ambiguous statements about what she was aiming for with Brexit negotiations. Despite not specifying whether a ‘Hard Brexit’ was the objective in the Sky interview or (afterwards) the interpretation was still that an economically-rupturing ‘Hard Brexit’ was increasingly likely.

Euro (EUR)
The Euro has been a strong option against its regular peers during trading today, thanks to Germany posting a trade surplus expansion in November.
Additional Eurozone news out today has been slightly less supportive, with unemployment remaining at 9.8% across the Eurozone in November and Spanish business confidence falling from 0.1 to -2.8.
Looking ahead to Tuesday, the morning’s big Eurozone news will cover French industrial production in November, which is expected to rise from a prior -0.2% to 0.6%.

US Dollar (USD)
The US Dollar has fallen against the Euro but risen against the Pound today, following continued controversy about President-Elect Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia.
In the face of overwhelming evidence that Russian hackers did influence 2016’s Presidential Election, which Trump won, the soon-to-be President has ‘acknowledged’ this information but his official response remains to be seen.
The lack of an immediate termination or freezing of relations with Russia by Trump is seen as telling and only serves to undermine his leadership ahead of his official inauguration on January 20th.
The near-term will bring a speech from Federal Reserve official Dennis Lockhart, who could comment on when the next Fed rate hike could take place.

Australian Dollar (AUD)
Interest in the Australian Dollar has been high over the course of Monday’s trading session, mainly due to an extremely positive response to forecasts regarding Australian export income.
Looking across 2017 as a whole, expectations have been put out that Australian export revenues will be in the hundreds of billions in 2017, something that has boosted the appeal of AUD considerably.
Also supporting an AUD advance has been November’s building permits figure, which has shown a rise from -11.8% to 7%.
Tuesday morning will bring Australian retail sales stats which have been forecast to print negatively, along with late-night Westpac consumer confidence figures for January.

New Zealand Dollar (NZD)
The New Zealand Dollar has advanced strongly across the board during trading today, potentially due to rising milk prices and perceptions of uncertainty in the US.
Domestic data out of New Zealand has been extremely limited so far this week, with the first actual announcement expected to be Sunday’s food inflation figures for December.

Canadian Dollar (CAD)
The Canadian Dollar has advanced strongly against the weakened Pound today but fallen in other pairings due to a sharp slump in the price of crude oil.
The last Canadian data published concerned the Ivey PMI for December, which rose from 56.8 to 60.8.
As of Monday, 9th January 2017, the Pound Sterling currency rates mentioned within this news item were as follows:

GBP EUR exchange rate was 1.1496, GBP USD exchange rate was 1.2171, GBP AUD exchange rate was 1.6543, GBP NZD exchange rate was 1.735, GBP CAD exchange rate was 1.6083, and GBP RUB exchange rate was 73.1647.

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