GBP/USD Price Forecast – GBP/USD Range Bound Ahead of UK Budget Speech & US Personal Spending Data

The GBP/USD is trading softly up in early Monday trading, testing the waters near 1.2830 ahead of a tense day that sees the latest annual budget speech from the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. The pair has maintained a range bound performance since trading session opened for the day with both USD and GBP trying to gain the upper hand. As of writing this article, the GBPUSD pair is trading near flat at 1.2834 up by 0.02% on the day. GBP has upper hand against USD despite risk averse market as t he UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Phillip Hammond commented during this speech yesterday that the UK would be capable of taking whatever fiscal measures were necessary to protect the UK’s domestic economy in the event of a no-deal Brexit, though the Bank of England (BoE) may be forced by circumstances to make further changes to interest rates.

Budget Updates Remain Main Focus of Sterling Investors

Monday is slated to see the latest Annual Budget from the Exchequer Chancellor Phillip Hammond, and the chancellor is expected to unveil key details from the UK’s budgetary outlook, somewhere around 15:30 GMT, and traders are tensing ahead of the report in case Hammond plays too many safe cards and focuses too much on the possibility of further extending the UK’s austerity measures, as well as planned funding solutions in the face of a potential no-deal Brexit. On the release front aside from budget updates , UK’s calendar will see release of UK Mortgage Approvals at 09:30 GMT, expected to decline from the previous reading of 66.44 thousand to 64.75 thousand, but the headier reading for the day will be the US Consumption Expenditure reading at 12:30 GMT, which is expected to clock in at 2%, in-line with the previous figure, for the year into September.

US calendar also sees the release of Core PCE price index and Personal spending data updates during today’s market hours. Downside pressure can be expected to mount for the Cable as the pair continues to see broad-based decline against a framework of continued Brexit-bearish headlines. When looking from technical perspective, The technical oscillators including Momentum and the Relative Strength Index both turned higher in the neutral territory on a daily chart. The Slow Stochastics made a move deeply into the bullish territory with swing upwards being the most probable move. However if the pair falls below 1.2800 handle, the pressure on falling further towards 2018 low of 1.2662 will mount higher.