Currency watch: The storm before the calm?

I will never get bored of the ebbs and flows of the financial markets.

The way that they can pitch and yaw between delight and despair as if embodying the spirit of your slightly mad auntie has been no more obvious than in recent UK economic data.

Two or three weeks ago the mood in the UK was almost one of defeat as many bowed their heads to the spending cuts and thought that we would be back in a recession faster than you can say “efficiency saving”.

Now, following a GDP announcement twice as high as expectation and other data showing an outperforming manufacturing and services sector, the brow is being mopped.

Be under no illusion, we are not out of the woods yet but naysayers will always just shout longer and louder.
 
With this in mind we expect that the Bank of England will have held rates and decided not to extend quantitative easing when you read this on Friday morning.

 This of course follows the Federal Reserve opening the taps for another round of stimulus to the tune of $600 billion, a truly staggering sum.

This does not mean that we won’t see another round of spending here in the UK but I believe that it will be at least February until we see it. Until then, we must deal with the auntie and struggle on.

Jeremy Cook, chief economist at World First, 05.11.2010