GBP/USD Daily Price Forecast – GBP/USD Continues Range Bound Movement Ahead of US NFP Update

The GBP/USD is heading into a dense Friday trading tightly just above the 1.2900 handle, and Sterling traders will be bracing for a London market session that will be seeing potential knock-on volatility from a top-tier GDP reading for the European Union, the UK’s closest neighbor, with the US Non-Farm Payrolls showing following closely behind. The UK has a thin showing on the economic calendar on its own today, with the low-tier Halifax Housing Prices for August at 07:30 GMT, which is also expected to come in at -0.3% m/m compared to the 1.4% previous reading. As of writing this article, the pair is trading at 1.2924 down 0.05% on the day. At 09:00 GMT the EU’s Q2 GDP will be dropping just across the Channel, and traders will be looking for the q/q non-preliminary reading to hold steady at 0.4%, , though any deviations could see some weakness build into USD-based pairs, especially if the actual figures miss the fairly-accurate preliminary reading.

Macro Data Updates To Provide Momentum For the Pair on Last Trading Session of the Week

“China and the UK had agreed to actively explore the possibility of discussing a free trade agreement after Brexit. Any act that harms China’s core interests will only put a spanner in the works,” the state-run China Daily newspaper said in an English-language editorial after a British warship made a sail-by in contested waters in the South China Sea. Britain has long courted China for a post-Brexit trade deal and talked up a “golden era” in ties, although any talks could not begin until Britain officially leaves the European Union and typically take many years to conclude. Any update that could prove to be non-beneficial to UK-China trade talks will provide bearish influence to British pound.

August’s NFP for the US, dropping at 12:30 GMT, is expected to be a good-on-the-outside jobs report, with median market forecasts calling for a print of 191 thousand jobs added in August, compared to the previous month’s 157 thousand; buried under the headline figure, Average Hourly Earnings for the year into August are expected to hold steady at 2.7%. Wage growth has been a vexing issue for the Federal Reserve, and continued sluggishness in the underlying reading could see clouds gather over the main NFP report, which has developed a habit of beating expectations recently. After catching a Brexit boost earlier in the week as investors begin to firm up hopes of a soft-Brexit scenario as the UK and Germany appear ready to begin working together, and the Sterling has managed to hold onto some of the lift experienced earlier in the week. Expected support and resistance for the pair are at 1.2890, 1.2845, 1.2800 and 1.2930, 1.2980, 1.3010 respectively.