| | It was reported today, that the Office for National Statistics released revised UK economic numbers. Gross Domestic Product fell by 2.4% in first quarter, surpassing projections of economists, which called for 2.1% contraction. That was supposed to be a correction to the original 1.9% figure. This new number makes for the worst quarter to quarter decline in GDP since 1958. However, compared to a year before, the drop was 4.9%, the biggest since records keeping started in 1949.
While the numbers are grim, not everything is that bad. While the Pound sold off on the news, it had reached 1.6745 level against USD. This is the highest quote since October last year. GBP has been on an impressive rally this years, in spite of all the bad news and the "nay" sayers, like Jim Rogers, whole in January boldly declared that UK had Nothing to sell. He has been a little of target so far.
Others are more optimistic about UK's future. Rating agency Fitch, maintained its top triple A rating on UK's sovereign debt. That's despite the economic contraction reported today. Farther more, Fitch's announcement is opposite to a relatively recent negative outlook by S&P. We will have to wait and see if S&P changes its view soon - it is not often that rating agencies disagree in cases of national debt. As for me, I think Pound will appreciate more in a foreseeable future.
My trade in in CAD-JPY didn't reach its target, but I managed to sqeeze a few pips out of it.
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UK in contraction. |
| | Posted 6/30/2009 1:26 PM - 55 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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