The pound sterling was able to maintain positive momentum against its European counterpart during London trade on Wednesday, but lost ground against the greenback. Analysts and market players are betting that the UK economy is poised to recover quicker than that of the collective economies which make up the Eurozone. Analysts say that that is a factor of the government's strong moves toward slowing the spread of COVID-19 with a widespread immunization plan. To date, the UK government has been able to administer a first dose of the vaccine to more than 15 million individuals.
In London trading as of 9:47 am, the EUR/GBP was trading lower at 0.8692 pence, down 0.1265%, moving away from the session trough of 0.86834 pence while the high was recorded at 0.87199 pence. The GBP/USD was lower at $1.3874, down 0.1935%; the pair has ranged from a trough of $1.38612 to a peak of $1.39150. The GBP/JPY was lower at 147.1300 yen, a loss of 0.2346%.
Data Confirm Analysts' Expectations
On the economic calendar today, a slew of upbeat data points to analysts' claims about the UK economic recovery. With little exception, most of today's releases from the Office of National Statistics in the UK were better than analysts had predicted. Most notably, CPI for January on a year-on-year basis was higher at 0.7% against a forecast of 0.5%. Core CPI was also higher at 1.4% in the same time frame, which was essentially unchanged from the previous reading but better than the expected 1.3%. The Retail Price Index was also upbeat with an annualized reading of 1.4% in January, higher than the predicted 1.3%.