Rishi Sunak enters Number 10 today as the new Prime Minister after a second time trying, and his appointment has already calmed markets. Although Sunak comes into power having made very few promises, and not commented much during the leadership campaign he does come in having tackled an 'extreme' economic challenge when he steered the UK through the pandemic. The difference this time around will be that he cannot take the 'do whatever it takes approach' that he had the power to do as Chancellor.
The pound was steady and remained range bound between 1.1271 and 1.1342 throughout Monday. GBP v EUR was a similar story with the pair moving between 1.1413 and 1.1530, both pairs saw the lower end of the range after the morning's negative Business sentiment data showed contraction for the third consecutive month.
Over the past month, Japanese authorities have spent around $37bn 'propping' up the declining Japanese Yen, who have adopted a 0% to minus 0.10% interest rate policy since 2010. Their highest interest rate in the past 25 years was 0.5%. Japan ministers recently stated that they have limitless funds to keep up the intervention, however, Japan's economic revitalisation minister stepped down on Monday after growing criticism of his failure to fully explain his ties to a church group that critics say is akin to a cult, a move that will be a blow to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
US Manufacturing PMI contracted very slightly to 49.9 in October and Services PMI contracted for the second consecutive month from 49.2 in September to 46.6 in October.
Data is limited today with only US Housing Price index data, and US Consumer confidence data this afternoon.
GBPUSD resides at 1.1320
GBPEUR resides at 1.1469
EURUSD resides at 0.9867
