It's a NO!

Having dominated the markets and news for months on end, this morning saw the result of years of campaigning in Scotland by both the YES and NO camps as a resounding ‘NO’ in favour of remaining part of the United Kingdom. At last count, 55.3% were in the NO camp while 44.7% in the YES. With the markets having already priced in a NO win, it wasn’t a mad leap for GBP although we did see it hit its best level in 2 years against EUR. There was also a 2 week high seen against USD with a push through the 1.6420 resistance level. Despite the vote in favour of remaining part of the Union, we’ll now see Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, push hard for the reforms which were promised by Westminster to entice voters to stay in the UK. How quickly those promises come to fruition (if at all) remains to be seen. In other news for the UK, we saw lower than expected numbers come in for the retail sales (3.9% versus 4.1% predicted) but this didn’t do much following the Scottish vote outcome.

In the US, things appear to be stabilising economically with a lower than expected unemployment number coming in at 2.429m (2.47m predicted), and jobless claims numbers coming in at 280k versus a 305k consensus.

In the Eurozone, a lack of any solid data meant EUR would always take a knock with the action happening elsewhere. The disparity between Fed and ECB policy differences was highlighted as we currently see the European Central Bank’s QE measure inching closer to being implemented and the recent lowering of the interest rate showing that the EU is lagging behind its opposite numbers.