FX.co ★ GBP/USD: Borish Johnson's roadmap to lifting restriction

At a time when the number of new cases of coronavirus infection is growing rapidly in the United Kingdom, the government is taking a step towards completely lifting stringent restrictive measures.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday that he intends to lift the restrictions from July 19.

Here's what will change according to the roadmap:

• All restrictions on social contacts will be lifted, including rules limiting internal gatherings to 6 people and street gatherings to 30 people.
• The government's decree requiring citizens to work from home will be canceled.
• No more restrictions on the number of guests at events such as weddings and funerals.
• All businesses will be allowed to reopen, including nightclubs.
• All capacity restrictions will be lifted for venues including theaters, concert halls, and sports arenas.
• The 1-meter rule for indoor social distancing is canceled, except in specific locations such as the border at airports and when people self-isolate.
• No more legal requirements to wear face masks. Recommendations will be issued on when people can consider using them, such as in closed or crowded places.
• No more restrictions requiring bars and restaurants to only serve tables or set up tables separately for social distancing.
• The limit on the number of visitors for residents of nursing homes has been lifted.
• The law will not require Covid status certification to be used as a condition of entry into any country, although businesses can voluntarily accept so-called Covid passports.
• The testing, tracing, and isolation system will remain, and free asymptomatic testing has been extended until the end of September.
• The legal requirement of self-isolation if you test positive for COVID-19 or are asked to do so by the National Health Service will remain.

Following the points above, everything looks good enough, but business is still concerned that the COVID situation may worsen and new problems will arise, restrictions that the government is silent about at the moment.

UK Health Minister Sajid Javid warned that new coronavirus cases could rise to 100,000 a day over the summer as the country prepares to loosen rules on July 19. At the moment, Britain is already at levels in January with 27,000 new cases of infection, which was only about 2,000 at the beginning of May.

Time will tell what all this will lead to, but what can be said for sure is that right now, a speculative race awaits us.

What is happening in the market in terms of technical analysis?

The pound sterling has been weakening since the beginning of June, losing about 3.5% of its value. The downward movement is quite large, but at the scale of the medium-term trend, the exchange rate of the British currency is still high.

For price changes since the beginning of July, there is a slight correction from the pivot variable 1.3730. As you can see from the daily chart, the 1.3730 variable pivot point coincides with the support area from the beginning of spring, thus, the technical questions, how and why the pullback occurred, disappear. The reduction in the volume of short positions was expected, now the main question is how the quotes will behave further.

In this situation, it is worth focusing on speculative interest, depending on the flow of information, as well as the points of price retention.

In simple terms, if the business continues to panic and the quotes go below 1.3670, then the downward development will continue towards 1.3300. At the same time, if the information noise stimulates the success of Boris Johnson in the fight against the consequences of the coronavirus, then we may fall into a medium-term trap in the form of a large side channel at 1.3700/1.4250.