UK Retail Sales rises 0.9% MoM in Jan vs. +0.7% expected, GBP/USD jumps

The UK Retail Sales rise 0.9% MoM in January.
Core Retail Sales for the UK jump 1.6% MoM in January.
Cable jumps 10-pips on upbeat UK Retail Sales data.

Dhwani Mehta FXStreet

The UK retail sales came in at +0.9% over the month in January vs. +0.7% expected and -0.5% previous. The core retail sales, stripping the auto motor fuel sales, stood at +1.6% MoM vs. +0.8% expected and -0.8% previous.

On an annualized basis, the UK retail sales rose 0.8% in January versus +0.7% expected and +0.9% prior while the core retail sales also advanced 1.2% in the reported month versus +0.4% expectations and +0.7% previous.

Main points (via ONS):

The increase was mainly because of moderate growth in both food stores (1.7%) and non-food stores (1.3%).

Fuel saw a large fall of 5.7% in the quantity bought in January 2020 when compared with December 2019, which coincides with a rise in fuel prices of 2.3 pence per litre between December and January.

Online sales as a proportion of all retailing was 19.0% in January 2020, down from 19.3% in December 2019.

FX implications:

GBP/USD jumped 10-pips on the upbeat UK Retail Sales data. The spot now hits a new session high of 1.2926, up 0.05% on the day.

Author

Dhwani Mehta

FXStreet

Residing in Mumbai (India), Dhwani is a Senior Analyst and Manager of the Asian session at FXStreet. She has over 10 years of experience in analyzing and covering the global financial markets, with specialization in Forex and commodities markets.

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