Pound steady above $1.23

The pound steadied on Thursday after a few days in which uncertainty about Brexit has seen both its biggest rise in decades against the dollar and two of its heaviest slumps in months.

Sterling climbed back above $1.2320, having been knocked as low $1.2254 overnight by a dollar rally after Federal Reserve head Janet Yellen flagged the likelihood that U.S. interest rates will go up for the next few years.

The pound also climbed against the euro, nudging 0.3 percent higher to 86.47 pence per euro as traders waited to hear from President Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank's first meeting of the year.

New data, however, showed that Britain's housing market had its weakest month since just after June's Brexit vote in December.

Two of Europe's biggest banks, HSBC and UBS, also warned on Wednesday that they could each move about 1,000 jobs out of London, while Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper reported U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs had similar plans.

AG Markets Review