UK retail sales finishes off another poor week for GBP

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Written by Dan Waterman
June 20th 2025
Tensions in the Middle East settle down going into the weekend providing some support to GBP..

UK retail sales for May saw awful figures across the board.

Food store sales saw the largest monthly fall in 4-years, department store sales were down 1.5% and the overall figure fell by 2.7% versus last month. Last May the recording was +5%, this time round it was -1.3%..

The Pound is steady though as more important factors took centre stage.

President Trump has said he will decide within 2-weeks whether to strike Iran (which just sounds mad writing that) and this has provided some respite in financial markets.

Elsewhere, de-dollarisation continues and the Euro is benefiting.

Societe Generale have this morning shown that central banks and institutional investors continue to diversify away from US assets. Markets in Asia are seeing the biggest benefit so far, but the EU continues to mop up consistent business and is accelerating.

USD's status as the de facto global currency is under extreme pressure since Trump came back into power.

France have today drafted a statement ahead of the EU summit suggesting it wants EU institutions to explore actions into becoming the world's number 1 reserve currency.

Currently the Euro sits at the highest it has ever been in terms of reserve allocation (20%) with the USD (57%) at the lowest level since it overtook GBP (currently 5%) after WWII. 

There is a long, long way to go and it may never happen, but if it does, the ramifications for GBP, EUR & USD would be huge.




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Danske Bank - £-€1.22              (£-€1.22 in Q1)
Barclays Bank - £-€1.20            (£-€1.22 in Q1)
HSBC - £-€1.20                         (£-€1.22 in Q1)

Santander - £-€1.19                  (£-€1.20 in Q1)
JP Morgan - £-€1.18                 (£-€1.16 in Q1)
ME (Dan Waterman) - £-€1.17  (£-€1.18 in Q1)