Market Insight

Weekly Round-Up & The Week Ahead

Reece Dye

Reece Dye

Head of Corporate Clients

Published Last Updated 4 min read

Weekly round-up and a look at the week ahead for EUR, GBP, and USD.

USD

Last week, we once again saw a week dominated by the headlines of tariffs with a growing concern over how the cost of goods and the cost of living in general, will impact the everyday individual and how long until that effect starts to trickle down. GBPUSD has retraced from last week's highs of 1.2550, now being supported by the 1.2400 in the early European trading session with the mounting fears of a global trade war on everyone's doorstep. The US saw the surprise of the Non-Farm payrolls with the report showing that the economy added 143k workers in January, which was much lower than estimates of 170k. The Unemployment rate decelerates to 4% form the estimates and the prior reading of 4.1%. The week ahead will see data driven by inflation with CPI and PPI figures dominating the headline of Wednesday and Thursday.

EUR

The Euro bloc increased their concerns around how the Tariffs will shape the economy for 2025 into 2026. The Euro area will welcome the conclusion of the Germany Election so that forward guidance and stability will return. 2025 will be a year of fiscal dominance, reining back the spending and working on economic growth. President Marcon loudly expressed that although Tariffs will harm the European economy they will also harm the US, given the level of economic ties coupled with their ongoing concerns around inflation for the American people, the top priority for President Trump is not the EU but should continue to be China, which is where President Marcon feels President Trump will and should continue to focus his energy... Ultimately president Marcon stressed that the more tariffs one places across a wider range of sectors will increase the cost and create additional inflation. For the Euro bloc its top priority is competitiveness, defence, security and its sustainable energy demand.

This week will be a slow week with very little on the data front.

GBP

Last week, we saw the Bank of England lower the policy bank rate by 25 basis points at the February meeting which was widely anticipated. Two members of the Monetary Policy Committee, however, unexpectedly voted in Favour of a 50-bps cut as a mechanism to drive economic growth. The issue for the UK now, is what long-term effect will this have on inflation, and whether the economy will be able to get back to the Bank of England's 2% inflation target, as the Bank of England now expect the UK economy to grow 0.7 per cent this year revised down from the previous estimate of 1.5 per cent. Rachel Reeves will likely be forced to either raise taxes again or cut spending in order to meet her fiscal rules, coupled with Governor Bailey pointing to the deterioration in business and consumer confidence, indicating that there is a slowdown in demand which is one of the main reasons for the slow growth performance. This week will see a week of slow week of data driven movement, with the GDP m/m set to be released on Thursday.


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