yeah, I don't know what mischief is up to. I'd shrug, but today's surprise offered quite the counterfactual.

Bloomberg breaking this morning
Pound Climbs to Three-Week High as Barnier Pledges Unique Deal
1:$130.00 (1: €1.11)

RTE elaborates this afternoon
Barnier says EU prepared to offer UK unprecedented relationship

"We are prepared to offer Britain a partnership such as there never has been with any other third country," Mr Barnier told reporters in Berlin after a meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
[...]
He hinted that the UK could be willing to compromise on giving some role to EU institutions, such as the European Court of Justice, in reaching an agreement on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
[...]
Officials on both sides say an agreement by October is unlikely, and they are now aiming for a mid-November deadline.

Speculators' reaction seems to me over-optimistic given misdirection from UK this past year. Indeed, independent.ie ran (unqualified) early downside prediction despite today's PR (paired with "Global central banks set to dump £100bn of sterling in hard Brexit").

Euro tipped to near parity with sterling under hard Brexit

It does not allow for an even more destabilising so-called worst-case scenario - where planes don't fly and medicine supplies run out.

An alternative scenario, of an orderly transition, would boost the pound - to 87 pence in the final quarter of this year and 88 pence versus the euro in early 2019, Investec thinks.

With scant progress in talks to date, traders are increasingly pricing in a harder scenario.

I suppose, without acknowledgement, the editors weighted steady IE-US surplus trade against EU27 -1 rebalancing.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.