A dollop of May housing data from the UK is set to show a bit of an improvement from the previous month: [B]Mortgage Approvals[/B] are set to rise by 41K, the most in over a year, while [B]Construction PMI[/B] is likely to tick up to 39.5 from 38.1 in the previous month. Importantly, the news is only relatively encouraging: results in line with expectations would still see mortgage approvals down -25.6% from a year earlier while a reading below the 50 “boom-bust” level for the PMI metric means the construction sector is still shrinking, albeit at a slower pace. With that in mind, the data does not amount to a significant departure from the economic outlook already priced into the [B]British Pound[/B] exchange rate, suggesting sterling is likely to look past the releases to continue taking cues from trends in risk appetite. Indeed, short-term studies show a trade-weighted average of the Pound’s value against top counterparts is now over 85% correlated with the MSCI World Stock Index.