The rate was expected to consolidate by retracing back up or trading sideways before resuming its decline.
UK Retail Sales
The British Pound depreciated against the US Dollar, following the UK Retail Sales data release on Friday at 09:30 GMT. The GBP/USD exchange currency rate lost 36 pips or 0.28% right after the release. The British Pound continued trading at the 1.3050 level against the Greenback.
The Office for National Statistics released the UK Retail Sales data, which came out worse-than-expected of negative 0.6% compared with the forecast of 0.5%.
According to the official release: "All sectors except household goods stores and fuel saw a decline in the quantity bought for the three-month on three-month movement; driven mainly by non-food stores at negative 1.0%. The quantity bought in December 2019 fell by 0.6% when compared with the previous month; the fifth consecutive month of no growth."
Economic Calendar
The week's scheduled event historical data tables have been published. Click on the link below to read the article.
GBP/USD short-term review
The GBP/USD has passed the support of the 55, 100 and 200-hour simple moving averages. By the middle of Monday's trading session, the rate was headed to the support of a weekly and monthly pivot points just below the 1.2940 mark.In the meantime, the pair can be considered oversold, as it has left SMAs above the 1.3030 level.
Combining these two factors, one can expect a decline to the pivot points, from where a retracement back up to the SMAs could occur.
Hourly Chart
On the daily candle chart, the December channel down pattern was pierced on Friday. However, the rate returned to trading in its borders on Monday.
In the meantime, the rate has retreated below the 55-day SMA, which provided support last week. On Monday, it turned into a resistance.
Daily chart
Meanwhile, trader orders were also neutral. In the 100-pip range, 51% of orders were to buy and 49% were sell orders.
The orders were 58% to buy on Friday.