The British Pound jumped versus the Greenback after the UK official bank rate was released on Thursday. The GBP/USD currency pair registered a 55-pip upmove, but soon came down and closed its one minute candle with a gain of 25 pips, or 0.18%, to continue declining down to the 1.4159 area.
The Bank of England's official rate came out in line with expectations. In fact, last time when there was a discrepancy with the forecast was back in July 2016. The BoE decided to leave its interest rate unchanged at 0.5% for the third straight month, however, hints of hiking rates were left, as two out of nine Monetary Policy Commitee members voted in favour of raising interest rates.
| Historical Data Table: UK Retail Sales m/m | Economic Calendar for 22.03.2018 | ||||||||
| Date | 16.11.2017 | 14.12.2017 | 19.01.2018 | 16.02.2018 | 22.03.2018 | 5:00 PM | MPC Memb. Ramsden Speaks | ||
| Actual | 0.50% | 1.00% | -1.40% | -0.20% | 0.80% | 6:45 PM | Council Memb. Wilkins Speaks | ||
| Forecast | 0.10% | 0.40% | -0.80% | 0.50% | 0.40% | 11:30 PM | JPY National Core CPI y/y | ||
| Initial Reaction on Main Pairs | SWFX Sentiment Indexes | ||||||||
| Open Price | Close Price | % Change | Longs | Shorts | |||||
| GBP/USD | 1.41682 | 1.41723 | 0.03% | GBP/USD | 47.21% | 52.79% | |||
| EUR/GBP | 0.87151 | 0.8711 | -0.05% | EUR/GBP | 28.90% | 71.10% | |||
| GBP/CAD | 1.82161 | 1.82153 | 0.00% | GBP/CAD | 26.19% | 73.81% | |||
| GBP/JPY | 149.64 | 149.601 | -0.03% | GBP/JPY | 47.67% | 52.33% | |||