What to expect for Sterling Euro rates in the week ahead (Tom Holian)

Sterling Euro exchange rates experienced their most volatile day of the year so far with the change in policy by the European Central Bank on Thursday afternoon. This saw rates move by as much as 2% on Thursday afternoon.

The ECB chose to cut interest rates to just 0% from 0.05% and also to add a further EUR20bn per month as part of their Quantitative Easing programme.

This initially caused Sterling to strengthen against the single currency as the ECB surprised the markets by going further than expected but the opportunity to exchange Sterling into Euros at 1.30 was extremely short-lived.

ECB president Mario Draghi’s comments came at just the right time to settle the markets and he stated that the ECB have done enough.

Indeed, the term ‘bazooka’ has been used to describe the ECB’s policy change so if this doesn’t work then we could see further problems for the single currency in the long term.

Next week the Eurozone releases unemployment data and the UK releases unemployment on Wednesday.

Both sets of data have been relatively positive for both areas so I don’t expect the announcements to cause to much change.

However, the biggest release for next week will be the Budget Statement due on Wednesday. With Chancellor George Osborne set to take centre stage I think this could cause Sterling to struggle.

Therefore, if you need to buy Euros it may be worth waiting till towards the end of the week.

If you have a currency transfer to make and want to save money on exchange rates compared to using your own bank then contact me directly for a free quote. Tom Holian [email protected]