No BoE surprises, unchanged and still highlighting some uncertainty

GBPUSD saw a rebound last week following a disappointing ECB press conference after trading below the psychological 1.50 level. The below-consensus expectations for IP this week (-0.4% m/m, Tuesday) is likely to cap the upside while on the contrary, last week's fixed income sell-off saw a modest re-pricing of the Fed-BoE "gap" , adding some upside to GBPUSD. 

"Although we continue to look for trend depreciation in GBPUSD, we think the USD may struggle to appreciate too much against major DM peers into year-end following last week's ECB", says Barclays.

This week's BoE should add little new information. The BoE is expected to keep policy unchanged at its December meeting (Thursday), as is widely expected by the market. It is believed that the tone of the minutes is likely to remain broadly the same as that of the November meeting, highlighting uncertainty among Committee members and muted underlying inflationary pressures, which if anything are biased to the downside.