What’s been happening? The pound weakened yesterday after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released its second estimate for UK GDP during the final quarter of 2017. Growth was unexpectedly revised lower, with projections for quarter-on-quarter GDP cut to 0.4% from initial forecasts of 0.5% and year-on-year growth cut to 1.4% against the 1.5% pencilled in when the first estimate was announced. This not only weakened the outlook for the UK economy going forwards, but also cast doubts over recent market confidence that the Bank of England (BoE) may raise interest rates again as soon as May. This pushed GBP/EUR lower, despite the euro itself being on soft form thanks to a disappointing set of meeting minutes from the European Central Bank’s (ECB) January policy gathering. The minutes revealed that policymakers rejected the idea of tweaking its policy language in order to slowly prepare markets for the eventual withdrawal of monetary stimulus, which has propped up the Eurozone economy for so long. The fact that members of the Governing Council don’t want to sound even a little bit more confident may have weighed on the euro, but not enough to drag it lower against the pound. However, GBP/USD was able to make a few gains on the back of disappointing monetary policy meeting minutes; this time from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Markets weren’t entirely sure how to interpret the minutes, as they stated that the current economic conditions likely warranted ‘further’ monetary tightening, but also that any adjustments to monetary policy would be ‘gradual’. The former suggests a more confident outlook, with policymakers maybe even hinting at more interest rate hikes this year, but the latter has been interpreted by some as an attempt to quell expectations of more than three hikes this year. | 
