Friday was a fairly dull day as currency markets seemed to take a breather from the paid and volatile movements of the previous weeks. Dollar was the main mover as it lost ground due to faltering equity bourses and an increase into oil prices pre-empting the 25 country Oil producers and consumers meeting in Jeddah.
 

Saudi Arabia has pledged to pump an extra 200,000 barrels per day after leaders pleaded for an increase to supply to deflate the recent record prices. We simply believe that this will not happen; 200,000 barrels is a fairly small amount considering earlier in the week talk was of 500,000 barrels and the price move upwards has had very little to do with supply and more with speculators bidding prices higher. It was interesting to see that Gordon Brown was the only principal from a foreign country in Jeddah and TV pictures showed his obvious intent to curry favour with the King.

Overnight the housing website Rightmove published more poor data on the state of the UK housing market. Prices in the UK rose in May by 0.1% but they note that any drop towards affordability is being offset by continual tightness in the mortgage markets.

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 Please feel free to contact me (jeremy.cook@worldfirst.com) if you have any questions or thoughts regarding these updates or if you are interested in a particular event in the calendar. If you would like to discuss your foreign exchange requirements, please contact our:Corporate Foreign Exchange Team on 020 7801 9050 or our Private Client Currency Exchange Team on 020 7801 9080.   

Disclaimer: The above comments are only our views and should not be construed as advice. You should act using your own information and judgement. Although information has been obtained from and is based upon multiple sources the author believes to be reliable, we do not guarantee its accuracy and it may be incomplete or condensed. All opinions and estimates constitute the author’s own judgement as of the date of the briefing and are subject to change without notice.Any rates given are “interbank” i.e. for amounts of £5million and thus are not indicative of rates offered by World First for smaller amounts. E&OE. Definitions of jargon/market terms can be found in our Glossary of Foreign Exchange Terms.

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