Recovery boosts the pound

A raft of good news has pushed the pound to a new five-year high against the dollar.

Inflation has fallen below the Bank of England's target rate of 2% for the first time since November 2009. Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation dipped to an annual rate of 1.9% in January, down from 2% in December.

Meanwhile, jobless data continue to be positive. While the unemployment rate jumped from 7.1% to 7.2% in the three months to December, employment rose by 193,000, while the number of people out of work and claiming benefits slid by a hefty 27,600 in January.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.