• GBP/USD edges lower on Friday amid the emergence of some USD dip-buying.
• The BoE’s hawkish tilt could underpin the GBP and limit losses for the major.
• The technical setup favors bears and supports prospects for a further downfall.

The GBP/USD pair struggles to build on the previous day's positive move and faces rejection near the 100-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) during the Asian session on Friday. Spot prices currently trade around the 1.2965-1.2960 region, down 0.15% for the day amid a modest US Dollar (USD) uptick, though the downside seems limited on the back of the Bank of England's (BoE) hawkish stance.

In fact, the BoE warned that the expansive Autumn Budget introduced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to fuel inflation, suggesting that it adopt a cautious stance toward rate cuts in 2025. In contrast, the Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell failed to offer any cues that the central bank was likely to pause rate cuts in the near term. This leads to a further decline in the US Treasury bond yields and might hold back the USD bulls from placing aggressive bets, which, in turn, should offer support to the GBP/USD pair. 

From a technical perspective, the range-bound price action witnessed over the past three weeks or so could be categorized as a bearish consolidation phase against the backdrop of the recent pullback from the highest level since February 2022. Moreover, failure to build on this week's recovery from a nearly three-month low, around the 1.2835 region, suggests that the path of least resistance for the GBP/USD pair is to the downside. The outlook is reinforced by the fact that oscillators on the daily chart are holding in negative territory.