UK retail sales went down by 1.9% in December

Posted in News

UK retail sales went down by 1.9% in December, with an unexpected drop that surprised investors.

Analysts forecast was for a much more moderate decrease of just 0.1%.

Those figures, released this morning by the Office for National Statistics, arrived just 3 days after Carney warned the markets that consumer could weaken in 2017.

The pound reacted losing around 50 pips against the US Dollar on the forex market, with the exchange rate against the greenback that returned below 1.23, while the eur/gbp recovered from 0.863 to 0.866.