Pound one-two punched by Brexit polls

After a few weeks  of polls showing a shift towards the “Bremain” camp, the Brexiteers have two reasons to be cheerful: two opinion polls show a shift towards the Brexit campaign, 24 days to go.

GBP/USD managed to  recover from one poll but the second one is already a heavier.

First came the ORB poll from the Telegraph. It show a  lead for the remain campaign, 51% against 46%. But while an absolute majority for Bremain may look promising, it is a big fall from the 55% to 42% lead the same poll showed a few weeks ago.

GBP/USD reacted with a drop from just over 1.47 to support at 1.4580 but since recovered to resistance at 1.4650.

Polls align

But then came the second poll, which was actually composed of two polls: ICM, polling for the Guardian, showed in the past a divergence between the online and phone polls. A small lead for Leave was seen online while the phone polls showed a nice lead for the Remain campaign. And in comparison to the previous ones, it was looking like the Bremain camp had momentum on its side.

Now, both polls show a Brexit lead, with similar  margins. The bigger difference is that the phone polls show more undecideds than the online poll. Nevertheless, when excluding the undecideds, they both show 52:49 in favor of the UK leaving the EU.

The exact numbers show a tight race and at this point, the  momentum matters and it seems the Brexiteers  have this much needed momentum.

Pound pounded

For the pound, it’s bad news. The status quo certainty is  desired over a leap into the unknown which will be damaging in the short term and unclear later on.

GBP/USD dropped to a new low of 1.4540. Further support awaits at 1.4440. More polls will come in the next days and may confirm or  disprove the Brexit  momentum seen at the moment.

Similar movements are seen on GBP/JPY: after a rejection of 163.80 we are back down to 161.40, under the 162.50 separator and above support at 160. EUR/GBP is challenging resistance at 0.7650.

More:  GBP/USD – the devil’s currency pair? [Video]

Here is how it looks on the cable chart: