FX round-up: 10-month resistance area caps cable moves higher

Cable found it difficult on the last trading day of the week to break above the 10-month high seen earlier this month and on Thursday, with heavy selling seen on both occasions at 1.3155.

Overnight moves were subdued at best and this carried over to the UK trading session where a range of 1.3073/1.3094 was seen. The day high of 1.3118 was seen at 1330 BST on the release of the US advance GDP quarter-on-quarter figure, which showed 2.6% growth versus forecasts of 2.5.

The top of the range was tested a number of times and finally gave way at 1500 BST with sterling up by 0.31%.

The pair traded higher on Friday on the back of comments from finance minister Philip Hammond regarding a transitional leaving deal with the European Union.

Hammond said that he wanted to avoid a "cliff-edge" where goods and people were stopped from being able to move across Britain's borders when it leaves the EU, helping to assuage worries about a hard Brexit.

Next week, investors will turn their attention to Thursday’s Bank of England rate annoumcement and quarterly inflation report.

Thursday saw the euro hit a two-year high against the US dollar, only to retreat on the back of sell orders waiting to execute at the 1.1770 area. Friday's trading saw a slow, gradual climb back up to those levels from Thursday's low of 1.1651.

By midday, the single currency was trading at 1.1706 and by 1600 BST, it was comfortably at 1.1746, up 0.59%. Euro gains were helped along by the release of a positive German preliminary CPI month-on-month figure of 0.4% and slightly better-than-expected French preliminary month-on-month CPI of -0.3%.

Meanwhile, the Swiss franc saw its fourth day of losses against both the euro and the US dollar.

Against the euro it was trading at 1.1380 by 1700 BST and against the dollar at 0.9686.

The franc's drop came after Swiss National Bank chief Thomas Jordan reiterated that the currency was still "significantly overvalued".

Morgan Stanley strategists expect more losses on the view that the franc remains the "most overvalued currency in the G10 universe" despite this week's fall.