The pound reversed early declines on Wednesday on a more optimistic outlook over Brexit, shrugging off numbers showing an unexpected fall in Britain’s services sector and pointing the economy would expand slightly in the last quarter of 2018.
Photo: Reuters
The British currency slipped 0.1 percent to $1.2728. Versus the euro it gained 0.1 percent to 89.06 pence.
Sterling recovered from the 17-month trough it touched on Tuesday, underpinned by suggestions in some quarters that the UK may not to depart from the European Union after all.
The IHS Markit/CIPS UK Services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) dropped to 50.4 from 52.2 in October, the weakest reading since just after the 2016 Brexit referendum and below all predictions.