Sometimes it can seem as if the British pound struggles against most other currencies, especially of late. But December 2009 proved to be a good end to the year as far as the pound against the Japanese yen was concerned.
The starting rate was 142.361, and on the first day of December that had already improved to 144.001. Just one day later it was up further to 145.471, so we were getting good figures on the currency converter and hoping that this would continue throughout the month. That week ended up on an exchange rate of 147.082, so this was clearly one of the best starts to the month that we could have hoped for.
But after an improvement to 147.218 on the 7th December the following day saw the Japanese yen fight back and knock the pound back down to 144.145. It went lower than this as the week went on as well, but the British pound at least managed to improve its situation to 144.871 again by the time the week was out.
The following week looked to be going much the same way because the British pound fell back again to 143.848 by the time Monday was over. But then things started to turn around and on the 15th we ended up with an exchange rate of 145.334 at the end of the day. Was the pound now starting to climb back up to a better position? It certainly seemed to be because the closing rate for that week was 146.200.
Christmas week got off to a slow start with a rate of 145.884, and with a short week in store we had a limited time to make sure we did the best we could against the Japanese yen. We did manage to climb up to 146.497 the following day, but the closing rate on Christmas Eve turned out to be 146.236.
Now we were down to those last few days between Christmas and the New Year. Once again it was a short week because New Year’s Day fell on a Friday, so what could the pound do to make sure it finished up on a good note for the week – and the year – as a whole?
Monday the 28th started us off on the right note as we managed to increase our exchange rate by a small amount to 146.278. There was a bigger jump up the following day though to 146.715, giving us hope that we could really make the last couple of days count.
There was a moment of panic on the 30th however as we fell back to 146.404, so with one day left to go anything could happen and the yen could yet end up getting the better of the pound.
Luckily though the British pound came in for a good finish and claimed a closing rate on New Year’s Eve of 149.938. That equated to an overall increase of 7.577 over the month as a whole – a good result for the pound.
It’s never that pleasant to read about the British pound having a bad time and going down in value against numerous other currencies. So it really made a nice change to read about how the pound got the better of the yen at the end of the year.
2009 wasn’t exactly a great year for the pound but it’s good to know that it didn’t finish on such a bad note. I wonder how it performed against other currencies though? Was this the only really good result or were there others as well? Does anyone else know?