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The Norwegian krone continued to recover ground against the British pound for the second straight day as UK politicians and voters are preparing for a general election on December 12.
While polls showed that the Conservatives had a double-digit advantage over the Labours most of the time, the latest surveys signal that Corbyn’s Labour Party is slowly chipping away at Johnson’s lead. A new BMG poll gave Boris Johnson a tight lead of 6 percentage points over Corbyn, which is more than half the margin compared to only eleven days ago.
In one of his latest comments, Jeremy Corbyn attacked big business and promised to extend employee rights in a “corrupt system” that he says favours billionaires. Among other promises, the Corbyn vowed to ban zero-hours contracts, introduce a living wage of 10 pounds an hour, and create a Workers Protection Agency.
Meanwhile, the latest BRC report on retail sales showed that British shoppers picked up their spending pace last month, with adjusted sales rising 0.9% year-on-year in November. Nevertheless, adjusted for the timing of Black Friday which wasn’t covered in this month’s report, total retail spending fell by 4.4% compared with numbers for November 2018.
Later today, markets will eye the UK construction PMI which is expected to come in at 44.5 points in November. While this is slightly higher than the previous month’s reading of 44.2, it still indicates an industry contraction.
From a technical standpoint, the Norwegian krone picked up support at an important resistance level around the 11.92 level as expected and traded at 11.8450 against the pound, as of 7:00 a.m. in London.
While yesterday’s low of 11.8252 could provide some support for the pair in the short-term, the triple top pattern that is forming on the daily chart looks quite bearish for sterling ahead of the general election.
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