Unveiling 2024: Market Outlook and Key Trends Get your free copy
-
UK
- Australia - English
- België - Nederlands
- Belgique - Français
- Brazil - Portuguese
- Canada - English
- Česká Republika - Čeština
- Deutschland - Deutsch
- España - Español
- France - Français
- Ελλάδα - Ελληνικά
- Hong Kong - English
- Hong Kong - Traditional Chinese
- Italia - Italiano
- Luxembourg - English
- Nederland - Nederlands
- Polska - Polski
- Portugal - Português
- România - Română
- Schweiz - Deutsch
- Suisse - Français
- Sverige - Svenska
- United Arab Emirates - English
- United Kingdom - English
Contact our experts
Ebury London
100 Victoria Street
London
SW1E 5JL
+44 (0) 20 3872 6670
[email protected]
Ebury.com
Euro slides on soft PMIs, Pound recovers on retail sales data
- Go back to blog home
- Latest
18 April 2019
Senior Market Analyst at Ebury. Providing expert currency analysis so small and mid-sized businesses can effectively navigate international markets.
Another very disappointing set of business activity PMIs sent the Euro sharply lower this morning.
While these numbers do not necessarily indicate that a Euro-area recession is on the immediate horizon, the recent downward trend in growth is a concerning development and is likely to keep the ECB on the sidelines for some time yet. Germany’s manufacturing sector remains a particular cause for concern and a real Achilles heel to the bloc’s overall economy.
UK retail sales rise sharply as consumers shrug off Brexit
A contrastingly more upbeat set of economic figures out of the UK helped the Pound recover ground against the US Dollar this morning.
Sterling initially sold-off to its weakest position in two weeks, dragged lower by the decline in the EUR/USD rate. A surprisingly robust set of retail sales figures did, however, allow the currency to reverse around half of these losses. Retail sales jumped by 1.1% month-on-month in March and by 6.7% on a year previous, the largest increase in the measure since late-2016 (Figure 1). This is a very encouraging development that suggests consumers in the UK have been seemingly unfazed by the uncertainty surrounding the elongation of the Brexit process.
Figure 1: UK Retail Sales (2011 – 2019)
Fed members strike dovish tone, US retail sales eyed
This afternoon will also see the release of the US retail sales numbers, expected to show that consumer activity picked up pace last month following a fairly poor start to the year.
Activity has been characteristically light on the ground in the US leading up to the long Easter weekend. We have, however, had a number of Federal Reserve members making public appearances. Philly Fed member Harker stated yesterday he saw a maximum of just one rate hike in 2019 and one in 2020. Fellow policymaker James Bullard was even more dovish, stating that the US economy has not shown signs of moving towards higher productivity, higher interest rate regime.
All in all, these comments give us no reason to believe that the FOMC is in any hurry whatsoever to alter their current patient, wait-and-see approach to policy.
Cookies and Privacy
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. For more information see our Privacy NoticeAccept Settings Reject
Privacy Overview
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
cf_use_ob | past | This cookie is set by the provider Cloudflare content delivery network. This cookie is used for determining whether it should continue serving "Always Online" until the cookie expires. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement | 1 year | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional | 11 months | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_ga | 2 years | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. |
_ga_P8154YCRDP | 2 years | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. |
_gat_gtag_UA_51187572_50 | 1 minute | Google uses this cookie to distinguish users. |
_gid | 1 day | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages visted in an anonymous form. |
_hjFirstSeen | 30 minutes | This is set by Hotjar to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether this was the first time Hotjar saw this user. It is used by Recording filters to identify new user sessions. |
_hjid | 1 year | This cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. |
CONSENT | 16 years 4 months 14 hours 27 minutes | These cookies are set via embedded youtube-videos. They register anonymous statistical data on for example how many times the video is displayed and what settings are used for playback.No sensitive data is collected unless you log in to your google account, in that case your choices are linked with your account, for example if you click “like” on a video. |
pardot | past | The cookie is set when the visitor is logged in as a Pardot user. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
IDE | 1 year 24 days | Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile. |
test_cookie | 15 minutes | This cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 5 months 27 days | This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website. |
YSC | session | This cookies is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos. |
yt-remote-connected-devices | never | These cookies are set via embedded youtube-videos. |
yt-remote-device-id | never | These cookies are set via embedded youtube-videos. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_lfa | 2 years | This cookie is set by the provider Leadfeeder. This cookie is used for identifying the IP address of devices visiting the website. The cookie collects information such as IP addresses, time spent on website and page requests for the visits.This collected information is used for retargeting of multiple users routing from the same IP address. |