Sterling nears one-month low as investors bet on BoE rate cuts  

LONDON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - The British pound ​hovered around its ⁠lowest in a month against the ​dollar on Friday, and was headed for its biggest weekly decline since January 2025, as investors weighed mixed ​economic ‌data and added to bets on Bank of England interest rate cuts.

Sterling was last little ⁠changed at $1.3468, near Thursday's one-month low at $1.3435. For the ⁠week, the currency was headed for ​an around 1.3% decline. Investors were contending with mixed economic data after figures published Friday showed that retail sales volumes rose at the fastest annual pace in nearly four years in ​January. ‌They jumped 4.5% compared to a year earlier, and 1.8% from the previous month, beating expectations. Separate figures, also released Friday, showed Britain ran a larger-than-expected budget surplus in January.

"I don't think we read too much into one retail sales print, although generally speaking, ​the consumption trend has been a bit better in the UK than we maybe ‌would have expected," Dominic Bunning, head of G10 FX strategy at Nomura, said. Economic data published earlier in the week had ‌also painted a weaker picture and added to dovish expectations for the Bank of England's monetary policy, with the UK's jobless rate picking up slightly in the fourth quarter of ​2025 compared to the previous three months and wage growth slowing. Inflation meanwhile eased to its lowest ‌in close to a year.

Friday's data does not "outweigh what we saw earlier in the week," Bunning said.

"The loosening in the labour market and the jump in unemployment, the still very ⁠clear ⁠downward trends in wage growth that are there - I would ‌still make the case that this points towards the Bank of England continuing to ease over the next, you ​know, over the ​next few months," he said.

Money markets were last pricing ‌in a close to 80% chance of the BoE trimming interest rates by 25 basis points at its March meeting, with a further cut being expected later in the year.