The pound stayed below $1.66 after a report showed the pace of Britain’s fourth-quarter economic expansion fell short of some analysts’ expectations.
Sterling pared its advance versus the euro and declined against 10 of its 16 major peers. U.K. government bonds stayed lower after the report, which showed gross domestic product increased 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter, matching the median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 0.3 percent to 1 percent, with almost half of the 39 economists surveyed predicting growth of more than 0.7 percent.
“Some market participants were sensing risks to the upside, and so the in-line print disappointed,” said Neil Jones, head of European hedge-fund sales at Mizuho Bank Ltd. in London. “It’s still a good print and I would expect cable to recover in the longer term,” he said, referring to the pound-dollar exchange rate.
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