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Podcast: Beyond Currency
Episode: 25 April 2022 - Sterling plunges as economic reality bites
Description: Data released on Friday illustrated the full potential of the slowdown in the UK economy. Retail sales fell by 1.9% month-on-month, following on from a 0.5% fall in February. This contributed to a year-on-year rise of just 0.9% versus market expectations of a rise of 3%.
Data for services output, the sector which makes up 80% of UK growth, was also released. This had been showing significant strength over the past few months, but in March, output fell back to 58.3 following an exceptionally strong read of 62.6 in February.
In most cases, analysts would have written off a single month’s poor data as a blip or...