Hello and welcome back to our first full currency report for the beginning of June. Last time we looked at the state of play for the last day of May and the first day of June, so this time we will be pressing forward to see how that particular week ended.
If you were keeping an eye on the rates on the currency converter last time around, you would have seen that we only had two losses out of the five currencies we focus on each week. The best news was that these two losses were fairly minor. We lost out on 0.0008 against the US dollar, so we only had a small change there. And against the Hong Kong dollar we lost out on 0.003, so once again there wasn’t really too much to worry about.
The real story (and the real success) last week was in the other three currencies, where we experienced good increases in each and every case. For starters we enjoyed an increase of over two Euro cents against the Euro, which put us on just shy of 1.20 against the single European currency. Elsewhere we achieved a gain of over two and a half cents against the New Zealand currency and an even better gain of four cents against the Australian currency.
The question now is whether or not we can achieve the same again to close out the week. Will we remain in a good position against the struggling Euro – the currency which has been said to be on its last legs already? Let’s find out what happened right now.
An overview of the currency markets for June 2nd – June 4th 2010
Our first port of call is as always the US dollar. Here we had a marginal change to start the week, so could we take on a position of power and gain a good increase to close the week out?
Our starting point was an exchange rate of 1.4562 and we had a good start to the remainder of the week because we managed to achieve an increase which took us to 1.4659 the following day. We did better still the day after by pushing ahead a little more and finishing on 1.4679. There was still one more day to go though and unfortunately we couldn’t keep pushing in the right direction. Instead we ended up with an exchange rate of 1.4574 to close out the week with. This meant we had added on a mere 0.0012 over the course of those three days.
So let’s think about that as we move on to see how we did against the Euro. This particular currency has been big in the news recently – some commentators are even speculating this could be the beginning of the end for the single currency. So as we dwell on that, let’s see how we progressed this week at least.
Our starting point was a healthy 1.1980 and after just twenty four hours we saw another increase to 1.1998. Was it conceivable that the British pound could do well enough to achieve a rate of over 1.20 against the Euro by the end of the week?
A slight drop to 1.1966 on Thursday evening put some doubts in our mind, but by Friday night they had been dispelled as we achieved a rate of 1.2085. This meant we had added on over a Euro cent since Tuesday evening.
Moving on to the Hong Kong dollar now, let’s see how we got on against that particular currency. Last time we left it on 11.347, and by the time Wednesday evening arrived that figure had changed to 11.424. So things were looking good so far – but could we continue in this direction?
There was certainly another small increase to look forward to on Thursday as we increased our standing to 11.437, but unfortunately we couldn’t sustain it for the whole week. We finished up on 11.358, so we had a small increase of 0.011 to celebrate there.
Moving on to the New Zealand dollar now, we are eager to see whether we could improve more on the two and a half cent increase we had achieved over the first two days of the week. Our starting point was 2.1631 and we did manage to increase that to 2.1666 on the following day. But from then on things did not go in our favour.
On Thursday we fell back to 2.1414 and by Friday evening we were on a total rate of 2.1435, so although we claimed back something on Friday we didn’t have the successful week we were hoping for. Instead we lost nearly two cents, almost wiping out the successes of those first two days.
Finally we have the Australian dollar to look at, after our four cent increase of the first two days. Our starting point was 1.7485 and we had a good start as we managed to increase that to 1.7566 the following day. But once again we experienced a similar change to the one we had seen against the Kiwi dollar. Thursday’s rate fell to 1.7313 before recovering slightly to close out the week on 1.7359. This gave us a loss of around a cent and a quarter, so it wasn’t the best finish we could have hoped for.
Notable events in the world of currency
Britain has small fall against Canadian dollar
From 1.5294 on Wednesday morning to 1.5221 on Friday night, the pound didn’t have the best week here.
A strange week against the Chinese currency
Here the pound went from 9.9462 to a high of 10.023 on Thursday evening, before falling back to 9.9528 again.
Very little change for the pound against the Indian currency
We changed only a tiny amount here, from 68.573 to 68.577 at the close of the week.
There was a story on the new preview of the Bloomberg website last week, concerning the state of the US dollar against the Euro. You can read more about what happened here.
So there we have it as another week closes. Make sure you come back soon as we explore what movements have occurred in the currency markets at the beginning of the first full trading week in June.
Some people probably think there is no point in reading older reports about the exchange rates because we’ve been there and done that. I read something recently by someone saying something to that effect.
But I don’t agree with that. I really think we can learn a lot about various currencies just by standing back and actually focusing on what has happened in the past. After all, isn’t this what other people do to make the most of bringing in money on the Forex markets?
This is why I don’t understand people who criticise others for looking back instead of forward. I think you have to look both ways to get the whole picture and I will always stand by that. What do other people think?