The UK Retail Sales helped sterling to keep afloat, USD continues to sink

On the last trading day of the week, GBPUSD continues to hold steady near the intraday highs in the mid-1.3200 region. The major takes advantage of the USD weakness and bright UK Retail Sales report.

The American dollar lost its shine and returned back below the 93.00 mark. Uncertainty about the new stimulus package and yesterday’s disappointing Initial Jobless Claims that again surpassed one million offset the Fed’s skepticism to introduce yield curve control and weakened the greenback.

Moreover, earlier today one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies Pfizer announced that it was preparing to submit the new COVID-19 vaccine for regulatory review in October. The company also stated that the new medicine was well tolerated by all populations and that they would release 100 m doses this year after getting an approval. Such headlines warmed risk-on on markets that supported GBP’s risk asset status detriment of the safe-haven USD.

Meanwhile, in his speech Democrat party’s presidential candidate Joe Biden stressed that his priority in case he won the elections would be curbing coronavirus and taking it under control. He promised to launch rapid tests immediately. And though markets didn’t pay much attention to those commentaries yet, they also may be considered as one of the factors that strengthened markets’ positive mood.

As for the data front, the UK Retail Sales were a pleasant surprise: headline m/m indicator, though was much lower than the June’s figure, bettered the expectations (+3.6% versus +2.0% forecasted) similar to the core numbers m/m excluding fuel and autos (+2.0% versus +0.2% expected). Those positive statistics helped GBP to bolster its positions despite concerns about Brexit and new COVID-19 cases in the UK.

Further, the traders will wait for the UK and US Manufacturing and Services PMI that may give some trading opportunities and influence the major’s dynamics.

From the technical point of view, GBPUSD sits comfortably in the green zone in the 1.3230-1.3250 range and while it stays above 1H 200-SMA, today at 1.3115, the pair may continue its march north. Resistance is marked at 1.3265-80, 1.3355, and 1.3420 while the support is at 1.3185, 1.3080, and 1.3045.

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