Here we are again with another brand new currency report, this time looking at the first two days of the week – the last whole week in May. Will the British pound have a good start to the week, or will there be more twists and turns to this story?
Towards the end of last week we had some interesting figures to start delving through. Let’s look at these now before we press on with some fresh ones for the week.
It was definitely a week that finished with two halves, as the pound lost some ground against three currencies and gained a lot against two others. In the case of the former we lost around a cent against the US dollar, virtually one and a half Euro cents against the Euro, and 0.071 against the Hong Kong dollar.
But it was a very different story with the New Zealand and Australian dollars. Here we managed to add on an incredible eight cents against the Kiwi dollar and nine cents against the Australian dollar. Could we hang onto those increases or would we start to lose them as the new week got underway?
Let’s find out now as we look into the rates we saw on our currency converter and relay them to you.
An overview of the currency markets for May 24th – May 25th 2010
So with the US dollar coming first as always, we have a starting point here of 1.4358. Can we move any closer to the $1.50 rate once more, or are we destined to spend another week significantly below it?
Things stayed virtually the same on Monday, as the rate only had a marginal difference of 0.000015 in our favour. But Tuesday produced no better result as the final rate for the day then was 1.4345. So all in all there was a small but negative difference of 0.0013 for the British pound here. At least there weren’t any significant losses.
Next up comes the Euro, where we last left things on an exchange rate of 1.1489. Here at least there was better news as by Monday evening we had seen a strong day for the pound, leaving us on 1.1617 as a result. And things got better still the following day as we closed out Tuesday evening on 1.1736. So it was a good positive start to the week against the Euro, with a total increase over two days of nearly two and a half cents.
Our third stop as always is the Hong Kong dollar. Could we hope to have a similar result here that was along the same lines as the one we had seen against the Euro? Or would it produce more of a US dollar kind of situation?
Our starting rate was 11.207, so we were hoping to get anything better than that – even if it would only turn out to be a small amount. Unfortunately for us the Hong Kong dollar had other ideas and we were soon heading further in the opposite direction.
By the close of play on Monday evening we had sunk down to 11.201, which left us wondering whether we would have a similar result on Tuesday as well. And indeed we did, unfortunately, as we slipped back to 11.193. This gave us a two day loss of 0.014 to contemplate.
So against the three currencies we did badly against last week, we managed to have one good result and two bad ones once again. But what would happen with the Kiwi and Aussie dollars, the two currencies that produced outstanding results for the British pound last week?
Our starting rate with the New Zealand dollar this time around was 2.1433. Perhaps a little predictably we had a loss on Monday which sent us back down to 2.1409. This was only a small loss though, so not too much to worry about there.
And in fact we had better news to come on Tuesday, as the final rate for the day turned out to be rather better at 2.1681. This meant we had managed to add more onto the exchange rate with the New Zealand currency. The pound ended up nearly two and a half cents better off over the course of just two days.
So could we replicate this event in Australia as well? Our starting point was 1.7389, so anything higher than this would be deemed a success. And once again we had a similar pattern to the Kiwi dollar, with a loss on day one which sent us back to 1.7342. And day two gave us a better result as we found ourselves finishing the day on 1.7659. This gave us a good increase of over two and a half cents, so it was a good end to these two days of trading.
Notable events in the world of currency
Things are steady between the Kiwi and Aussie dollars
There was predictably very little change between these two currencies for the first two days of the week. A starting figure of 0.8113 went to 0.8144 for the Kiwi against the Aussie dollar.
New Zealand dollar drops against US dollar
A starting figure of 0.6699 dropped to 0.6616 for the Kiwi dollar against the US dollar at the beginning of the week.
The Euro’s struggles continue
The Kiwi dollar did well against the Euro as the week got underway, climbing from 0.5360 as Monday’s markets opened to 0.5413 on Tuesday evening.
So it was an interesting start to the week, to say the least. Perhaps we can expect better results as the week goes on, but we shall have to wait and see.
As we were putting together this report, a news story from Bloomberg came to light that indicated how seriously European countries were trying to rescue the Euro. You can read the story here.
So there we have it for another currency report. Will the Euro continue to have bad results and lose ground, and will the pound take advantage of this situation? We will just have to wait and find out.
I liked the title for one of the small currency bits at the end of the main report here – ‘the Euro’s struggles continue’. This describes the situation we are in now as well! These are some long struggles.
My main concern is whether or not I will get a foreign holiday in Europe this year. There are some truly sensational places to go there and I am spoilt for choice from that point of view. But I don’t want to spend more than I have to for the privilege of going there, so I am hoping the pound will do better against the Euro as time goes on. It would certainly make life easier for me! I will be watching to see how we do.