Forexpros – The pound pared gains against the U.S. dollar on Thursday, pulling away from a two-day high as Greece approached the deadline for its private creditors to sign off on a long awaited debt swap deal.
GBP/USD pulled back from 1.5832, the pair’s highest since March 6, to hit 1.5789 during U.S. morning trade, still up 0.30%.
Cable was likely to find support at 1.5721, the low of February 24 and resistance at 1.5849, the high of February 10.
Market sentiment weakened after the Department of Labor said that the number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week rose by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 362,000, confounding expectations for a decline of 4,000 to 350,000.
The previous week’s figure was revised up to 354,000 from 351,000.
But investors remained cautiously optimistic amid reports that a number of major European financial institutions had signed up to the deal, which is aimed at writing down 53.5% of the country’s EUR177 billion debt.
A positive outcome should clear the way for Greece to tap a second bailout package and avert a messy debt default.
Earlier in the day, the Bank of England kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record low of 0.5%, where it has been since March 2009, and announced no expansion to its GBP325 billion asset purchase program, following a GBP50 billion increase in the previous month.
The minutes of the central bank’s monetary policy committee meeting will be published on Wednesday, March 21.
Elsewhere, sterling was lower against the euro with EUR/GBP adding 0.36%, to hit 0.8384.
Also Thursday, the European Central Bank left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 1% for the third consecutive month in March, in a widely expected move.
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