GBP Awaits GDP Revision, 9 New Premium Trades

UK Q2 GDP revision could boost sterling, European tensions continue to cause concern, Japanese CPI turns positive as PM Kan resigns, US Q2 GDP revision, Bernanke speaks at Jackson Hole. Ashraf's Intermarket Insights has 9 new Premium trades, including GBPUSD, EURGBP & gold.

GBP sustained significant pressure over the past few days and it wasnt helped yesterday by weaker consumer confidence figures for July, which dropped to a 3 month low. Yesterdays CBI retail sales data for August confirmed the fears that the August riots did indeed hit trade and saw the index fall to -14 to its lowest level since May 2010. With MPC member Martin Weale refusing to rule out further easing steps yesterday the pound has remained heavy.

Today's UK Q2 GDP revision could well change that with expectations for growth to remain unchanged at the preliminary 0.2% we saw earlier this month. The year on year figure is also expected to remain unchanged at 0.7%. A slight revision higher would be even better, but even at 0.2% the growth seen in Q2 is still better than France and Germanys Q2 figures combined.

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Tensions in Europe continue to remain elevated with Greece having to access the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) in order to keep its banks funded, raising fears that they are starting to run out of collateral acceptable to the ECB. The Finland collateral question is also one problem that wont go away after their finance minister refused to back down on the agreement reached with Greece. With Greek bond yields continuing to hit record highs there are fears that the current divisions between European members regarding collateral and the demand by Finland will scupper the bailout and bring the while euro castle crashing down.

Japanese inflation for July continues to remain benign, but it did improve on Junes -0.4% coming in at 0.2%. For all the recent strength of the yen and loose monetary policy it would appear that Japan could be starting to see positive effects in regards to fighting deflation. In the meantime Prime Minister Kan resigned paving the way for a new leader next week and Japans sixth Prime Minister in five years.

US Q2 GDP is due just before the US open and markets will be looking for some improvement ahead of Ben Bernanke's big speech at Jackson Hole this afternoon where a year ago he set the scene for what turned out to be QE2. It is doubtful there will be a repeat this year.