GBP: Pound Sterling started this week with corrective rollback

At the Forex currency market the British Pound Sterling rate is going down on Monday as part of corrective rollback in the condition the thin market which still prevails; trading floors in many counties including Great Britain are closed due to the New Year holidays.

Forex forecast: MACD indicator is in the negative area for the pair GBP/USD and is moving along the signal line, preventing from forming a signal. Stochastic Oscillator is giving a pair sell signal, being in the neutral zone.

Forex recommendations: as it is illogical to trust just a single signal, it would be wiser to await when bearish sentiments intensify for the pair and a breakdown at the level of 1.5500 will take place, then, traders’ targets will be the levels of 1.5480 ? 1.5450. Otherwise, the pair will consolidate close to the current levels.

Statistics on the housing market released on Friday showed that, as per Nationwide estimates, houses prices in the UK increased by 0.4% m/m (+0.4% y/y) in December. At the same time the index has lost 1.0% on quarterly basis in QVI.

In other respects the situation in British economy remained unchanged.

? CIPD, the UK Institute of Personnel Development believes that the situation in the employment sector can be complicated for UK economy in 2011, because unemployment rate can rise to 9% and employment can reduce to 200 thousand jobs.

According to CIPD estimates reduction in the public sector will amount to about 120 thousand jobs and about 80 thousand in the private sector. We would remind that British Government plans to reduce the number of staff in public sector by 330 thousand by 2015.

However, OBR, Committee on Budget Responsibility claimed that dismissal will be compensated by creation more that 1.5 million jobs in private sector. Anyhow, the year 2011 is not going to be easy for the UK economy.

Note that unemployment rate in the UK increased to 7.9% in QIII against the previous level of 7.8% and the forecast of 7.7%. Number of unemployed in the UK decreased only by 1.2 thousand against expected reduction by 3 thousand.