Pound down to one-month low against dollar ahead of trade balance, to track global cues

The sterling has fallen back to a crucial support line ahead of a light calendar week with the dollar strength weighing on the currency, which seems to be at the mercy of global events as well as the general greenback performance over the next few days.

The GBP/USD dropped to 1.5032 on Friday (6 March), a one-month low, before closing 1.1% down on the day at 1.5052. The pair mostly reversed the 2.5% gain in entire February within just a week in March.

The 1.5000 line becomes significant again for the pair, which has failed to break below the 1.495 mark in the January and February attempts.

A move beyond that level will take the pound to its lowest since July 2013 when the trough was 1.4813. The currency will have some support there but a stronger support will be 1.4228, the 2010 low.

The UK data calendar for the March 9-13 week has nothing big to mention although the January industrial output and NIESR GDP estimate for the three months to February will be of some importance on 11 March.

The pound market will then shift focus to the UK trade balance numbers for January scheduled for 12 March but that day's bigger attraction would be the weekly jobless numbers as well as the retail sales data from the US.

The February producer price index and the March Reuters/Michigan consumer confidence index are other two US numbers that could impact markets in the coming week. Both sets of data are due on 13 March.

Despite having lost heavily to the US dollar, the sterling continued to rally against the euro as the common currency has suffered much bigger losses against the greenback. The EUR/GBP has hit a new seven-year low of 0.7182 in the last week.