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FX round-up: Pound skids lower still ahead of retail sales data
Sterling continued to skid lower ahead of Thursday's eagerly-awaited monthly retail sales report, amid warnings from Brexiteers against any plans that would see the UK remain tied to EU tariffs for a single minute longer than was necessary.
In particular, overnight Jacob Rees-Mogg, who commands enough support among Eurosceptic Conservatives, said he was "losing faith" in the Prime Minister.
His comments, alongside earlier criticism from foreign minister Boris Johnson, saw the pound fall back to its November lows against the US dollar and by 2057 BST it was trading down by 0.57% to 1.33556.
Also dampening sentiment the turnout on April's reading for harmonised consumer prices, which slowed from a year-on-year pace of 2.3% for March to 2.2% last month.
Nevertheless, that was in-line with analysts' forecasts and solely the result of the impact of Easter timing effects on air fares, Barclays Research pointed out.
Harder to dismiss was IHS Markit's euro area composite purchasing managers' index for May which surprised to the downside, sending euro/dollar lower by 0.65% to 1.17028.
The headline PMI, which tracks activity in both manufacturing and services, fell from a reading of 55.1 in April to an 18-month low of 54.1 for May.
Economists had projected a reading of 55.0.
On the back of those numbers, economists at JP Morgan pushed back their call for a first interest rate hike by the European Central Bank from March to June 2019.
Also on investors' minds was the ongoing political drama in Rome.
Yet the biggest driver of FX movements on Wednesday were the downbeat comments, also overnight, from US President Donald Trump regarding the prospects for a successful trade deal with China and the scheduled - but now no longer certain - meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un on 12 June.
That was duly reflected in dollar/yen, which fell by 0.72% to 110.102.
In the emerging markets space meanwhile, Turkey's central bank was forced to intervene to brake selling in the country's currency, the lira.