GBP: Inflation data confirms December cut unlikely – ING

GBP/USD has broken past the 1.270 level this morning after a slightly hotter-than-expected UK CPI print for October, ING’s FX analyst Francesco Pesole notes.

Next BoE cut to commence in February

“We know that the Bank of England's focus is on services inflation, so the rise in headline and core CPI to 2.3% and 3.3% is not really relevant. CPI services did accelerate from 4.9% to 5.0%, which is in line with the BoE and our own forecast. A lot of that acceleration is, however, down to components such as airfares and rents that the BoE deems less indicative of persistent inflation. Our economist’s estimate of ‘core services’ inflation saw a deceleration from 4.8% to 4.5% in October.”

“That is, however, still insufficient to prompt a cut in December, in our view. Even if there is another inflation print before the next BoE meeting, we would probably need a sharp slowdown in services inflation to put a cut back on the table. Our house view is that services CPI will keep bouncing around 5% for the next four months and only turn decisively lower from 2Q25, when we expect the BoE to accelerate the pace of monetary easing.”

“We currently see the next BoE cut in February, which isn’t fully priced in (19bp). We think there will be room for a dovish repricing to negatively affect sterling next year, but the policy gap with a dovish ECB will hardly be closed and we remain generally negative on EUR/GBP. For the short term, we stick with our call that the pair will move back below 0.830.”

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