FX round-up: Pound jumps, BofA points out strong April seasonality
26-03-2018 18:29
Sterling gained further ground against a backdrop of ongoing weakness in the US dollar, even as analysts flagged the prospect for further gains in April.
Gains for Sterling also came alongside last Friday's US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showing a further build-up in net longs in Sterling.
By 1956 BST, cable was to be seen 0.7% higher to 1.42308, having hit an intra-session high of 1.4245. In parallel, the US dollar spot index was 0.49% lower to 89.011, having plumbed an intra-day low of 88.979, just a shade above its 52-week lows of 88.253.
Euro/dollar meanwhile was pushing ahead by 0.83% to 1.24559.
On a related note, on Monday analysts at BoA-Merrill pointed out to clients how the pound tends to rally in April "no matter what the political/macro backdrop".
"Within the G10 FX complex, there is no stronger seasonality than in GBP through April. GBP/USD has rallied every single year for the past 14 years. This remarkable outperformance covers major events such as the financial crisis, general elections and the Brexit referendum, and suggests to us a consistently strong underlying flow which has trumped these idiosyncratic factors.
"A combination of the end/start of the UK tax year and a heavy month of dividend payments by UK corporates are factors which we think are at play driving GBP strength during April," they said.
Elsewhere, the Greenback was also under pressure almost across the board, with analysts at Rabobank pointing out to clients how the same weekly CFTC data, covering up to 20 March, revealed that speculators' net position in the US dollar had flipped back into negative after just one week.
"The US dollar has remained under pressure, though it has managed to recover some ground against the Japanese yen, after hitting sixteen month low, as concerns grow around the stability of Prime Minister Abe's government in the wake of an ongoing political scandal," CMC Markets UK's Michael Hewson pointed out to clients.
Against that backdrop, dollar/yen was up by 0.47% to 105.240.
