Pound Rises After Evidence Shows EU “Stay” Campaign is Gaining Support

The U.K. pound rose for the first time in three days after evidence emerged that the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union is gaining support.

The pound climbed against all its 31 peers after the report of the poll published on Monday showed that older voters are now switching sides to keep Britain in the European Union. Britons will vote to decide whether to keep their country’s membership of the European Union in June referendum, and the possibility of the two going their separate ways has sent the pound to a seven-year low against the US dollar and three year low against the yen.

“The pound is reacting with a lag to the news overnight,” said Lee Hardman, a foreign-exchange strategist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in London. The latest opinion poll “shows widening support for remain. That’s reinforcing the market’s view the likelihood of Brexit is relatively low, and that’s helping the pound to rebound.”

The European Union, whose economy is bigger than both China and the US, is the world’s biggest single market and accounted for 25.4 percent of the world output, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The pound rose 0.4 percent to $1.4535 as of 9:32 a.m. in London and gained 0.8 percent to 76.87 pence against the euro, closing more than three-month gap..