The Pound keeps looking down. Overview for 19.02.2019

On Tuesday, GBPUSD is trading downwards; the Pound is obviously lacking positive news. 

The British Pound is falling against the USD on Tuesday morning. The current quote for the instrument is 1.2905.

The United Kingdom will report on the labor market today: among other things, investors are waiting for the December report on the Unemployment Rate. Market expectations imply no changes, 4.0%. However, if the actual reading matches these expectations, the Pound won’t pay much attention to it. In fall 2018, the British labor market was getting worse as the Unemployment Rate increased up to 4.1% in September and October, which was the highest level over the previous 5 months. The reason for this and for many other things that are happening in the British economy is reduction of investments and slowdown of business activity due to the Brexit complications. 

Apart from this, the United Kingdom will publish the Claimant Count Change in January (market expectations are +12.3K, which is twice as small as in December) and the Average Earnings Index for three months ending in December. Here the situation is the same: if new readings match the expected ones, the Pound will barely notice them, because the key trigger for the British currency right now is the news relating to discussions in the Parliament on the Brexit agreement with the European Union and further steps of the country’s Prime Minister Theresa May. 

May still have several days for preparing another draft of the agreement in a way that makes policymakers like it. It does not necessarily mean that May will be able to approve the document with the European Commission, but in this case, she should work out the problems as they come up.