"The underlying trend is one of strength, suggesting consumer confidence has remained steady since June's referendum".
- Kate Davies, Office for National Statistics
Britain's retail sector proved to be slightly worse than expected, as the amount of items bought missed expectations. According to the Office for National Statistics, retail sales increased 4.1% on an annual pace in September, compared to a 6.6% advance in August and analysts' expectations for a 4.9% gain. Meanwhile, clothing and footwear sales lost 2.8% after prices skyrocketed 5.2%, showing the biggest jump in six years. Moreover, Britain also enjoyed one of the warmest Septembers on record, thus people was not obliged to buy autumn clothes. Core retail sales, in turn, which exclude automobile sales and fuel, did not show any changes last month, compared to the previous 0.1% decrease in August which was revised up from an initial reading of a 0.3% decline. Analysts had expected core retail sales to add 0.4% last month. The following figures suggest the economy is continuing to be influenced by consumer spending, with retail sales contributing 0.1% to gross domestic product in the third quarter. Annual sales growth in the third quarter held at 5.4%, the strongest since the start of last year.
As a result, the GBP/USD traded at 1.2267 from around 1.2275 ahead of the release of the data, did not showing major changes.
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