Weekly roundup

Last week for the pound we saw GBP on the up again, backed up an increase in inflation (-0.1% up to 0.1%) and a fall in unemployment to 5.2%. Retail sales also showed positivity – up by 1.7% which is probably on the back of recent ‘cyber’ sales.

With Xmas almost on our doorstep, this week will be somewhat quieter. What we’ll see later today is CBI distributive numbers, then consumer confidence data tomorrow. There is then GDP data out on Wednesday which analysts are expecting to see fall by 0.1% to a lowly 2.3%.

Stateside, the big news last week was, of course, the interest rate increase to 0.25% and the speculated likelihood that interest rates will increase gradually over the course of next year. Inflation was seen to increase 0.5% in lead up to this announcement. On the flipside, Philly’s Fed was seen to come in below expectations at -5.9% - rather disappointing but possibly due to seasonal depression - and initial jobless claims were also seen to come in slightly weak.

This week will still be busy despite the upcoming holiday as we’ll see Michigan consumer sentiment figures and new homes sales numbers mid-week, while on Christmas Eve we’ll see initial home sales

Last week was up-and-down for Europe last week, despite strong domestic data released, as the EUR was at the mercy of events abroad, particularly the US. Industrial production numbers were up to 1.9%, and German ZEW came out at 16.1 – much higher than last month’s reading.

Again, this week will be quiet leading up to Xmas; all we’ll see is German consumer climate data and German import prices.