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The GBP/USD currency pair moved in a rather mixed manner during the whole period of previous trading week. The Sterling canceled its bullish momentum on Wednesday and declined, hovering near daily lows around 1.4235 mark. The reasons for such move was the announcement of the BoE's monetary policy committee which held the benchmark interest rate at 0.5%, where it has been since March 2009. Moreover, all nine MPC members unanimously agreed to make no changes to the central bank's 375 billion pound asset-purchase programme. The minutes also noted that uncertainty over the June 23 referendum on Britain's future in the European Union has begun deteriorate the economy. Nevertheless, the pound managed to show strong performance against the dollar on Friday, driven by a report showing that UK housebuilding hit a record high in February. Broader construction activity was weaker, equaling 0.3% in January and increasing 1.5% in the three months to February, showing the fastest growth in almost a year. As a result, starting a week around the 1.418 mark, the Cable went up to 1.42 in the morning on Fridays.
Following rather negative development of the pair during April 11-15 week, participants of our weekly Community Forecasts quiz decided to become much more bearish on the Cable, as currently only 27% of them support movement to the north in course of this week. Among important fundamentals from Britain, traders could pay attention to monthly employment report on Wednesday and data on retail sales on Thursday.
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