It’s time once again to see how the currency markets have been performing of late. Last time we were struggling to find some good news to report to you concerning the British pound. Some experts have suggested the pound will drop further in value before the end of the year, and judging by recent results this could well turn out to be true.
So let’s take a look at the figures we have discovered on the currency converter during the past week and see what they have to tell us. Could it be another bad time for the pound?
An overview of the currency markets for September 8th – September 10th 2010
Our opening figure against the US dollar on Wednesday morning was 1.5324. Could we improve on this or would we be ending the week in worse shape?
By the end of the day things were looking cautiously promising as a rate of 1.5445 came into play. We dipped back on Thursday though and ended up finishing on 1.5397 on that occasion. So was this a sign of another bad end to the week?
Fortunately things got better on Friday and we finished up on 1.5454 for the week as a whole. At least we had managed a small increase here.
Could we do the same against the Euro though? Our opening rate here was 1.2025 and by Wednesday evening this had changed to 1.2164, so it was good news to start with at least. But we followed the same pattern we had seen against the US dollar when we fell to 1.2109 the following day and then finished in a better state on 1.2144 on Friday night.
Moving on to the Hong Kong dollar now, we were starting from a rate of 11.903 here. We were boosted on Wednesday by a closing rate of 12.003, before squandering that lead and closing on 11.962 Thursday night. Luckily we followed that same pattern once more and finished the week on 12.004.
So would we see another pattern like this in New Zealand too? It certainly looked exciting as we climbed from our opening rate of 2.1239 to 2.1441 by Wednesday night. But then it all went to pot as we fell to 2.1210 first of all, and then closed on Friday on a sorry looking 2.1187.
Normally we see a similar pattern against the Aussie dollar as we do against the New Zealand dollar. Let’s see if that pans out this time. A starting rate of 1.6813 changed very little to 1.6842 to kick off the second half of the week. But we were soon down to a disappointing 1.6650 by the end of Thursday. We managed to claw back some of that on Friday, but we still ended the week on 1.6685.
Notable events in the world of currency
A marginal drop for the pound against the Canadian dollar
We didn’t get a lot of good news here either, as the overall picture from Tuesday to Friday dropped from 1.5976 to 1.5931.
Better news for the pound against the Swiss franc
There was good news here though as we soared from 1.5515 to 1.5812 over those three short days. It might be difficult to find good results but we had one here.
The pound sinks against the Indian currency
It wasn’t all good news elsewhere though, as the pound fell from 71.750 to 71.459 here.
You may need to sign in to read some of the news stories on FT.com, but it is well worth doing so. A good example came on Friday as this story broke. It would seem that the fears over the long term stability and viability of the eurozone have popped up again. As you will see when you read the news story, it isn’t hard to understand why.
So while it hasn’t been the best end to the week for the British pound, it hasn’t been good for the Euro either. Perhaps we shall see better news coming to the fore in future weeks, although we feel it could be a long time yet until we see more positive news to report on.
Exploring the world of currency is something of a hobby with me. I’m always interested in how the pound is faring in particular, since I live in the UK. Hopefully we shall see better results as time goes on, because it looks as though the pound is struggling somewhat at the moment. Things have been worse, but they’ve been better as well. A strong pound still seems a way off yet, doesn’t it?