Do we start to see a transition when it comes to buyers confidence when it comes to the UK housing market? Well mortgage approvals are increasing and it’s a natural effect after mortgage rates do start to come down. With interest rates cuts coming closer for every day, even if we don’t have a date set in place by Bank of England yet. We could see this morning that UK housing prices rose for the first time in a 12-month period and it did it with conviction. Expectations for February was that we would see an increase of 0.7%, figures actually revealed an increase of 1.2% year on year. One of the main pillars to a steady economy is a healthy housing market. Could this have an impact on the outcome for next weeks spring budget that will be delivered by Jeremy Hunt? Well let’s be certain that this data did come in handy and that it also injected some confidence for the government moving forward.
Core inflation will be released for the Euro zone this morning and after seeing inflation levels dropping for a number of nations and there is no surprise that expectations is for it to drop from 3.3% down to 2.9%. Core and inflation levels have been coming down naturally for Europe recently and if this continues the likelihood is that EUR will continue to drop off against other currency pairs like the GBP and USD. Followed by important data out of Italy, the third largest economy in the Euro zone – Government Budget, full year GDP growth and inflation rate being released. Is another factor that can cause further volatility on the EUR.