UK Services perk up

At last, some solid good news from the UK yesterday with the release of services PMI data which showed that things were surprisingly good for the UK last month – 55.9 instead of the 55.1 expected; a very strong reading indeed. The poor construction and manufacturing results have been somewhat softened by this good services result. The flipside is, however, that if inflation remains too low for too long then it’ll have a negative impact on long-term growth outlooks. It’s now expected that UK services will expand 0.6% for Q4 this year.

With nothing out of the UK today in terms of data, all eyes will be on the BoE meeting next weekend.

In Europe,ECB Chief, Mario Draghi, sent shockwaves through the market when he announced that he’d be extending QE by 6 months to end in March’17– the problem was that it wasn’t enough, along with the asset pool not being widened enough either, which has worried investors. The market, it seems, was looking for a much bigger injection to help rectify the euro economy. There wasn’t much data out aside from that, but we did see Germany’s factory orders (monthly) come in at 1.8% - higher than the 0.5% expected.

Across the pond, it’s been a very good week for the dollar. Today we’ll see a big announcement on non-farm employment change data at 13.30; with numbers expected to come in good, things are building up nicely to a possible interest rate hike later this month.