Welcome back to another week of currency information. Will the British pound have had a good week this time, or will there be more disappointing information to impart? Let’s find out how the currency converter figures looked this time.
An overview of the currency markets for April 18th – April 22nd 2011
Last time we finished on 1.6349 against the US dollar, but could we improve on that now? We dropped back to 1.6267 on the first day of trading, and there was only a marginal increase back to 1.6289 the following day. This put us halfway through the week already, since the Friday would be Good Friday and the first day of the Easter holidays.
Luckily the last two trading days of the week were good ones, and the British pound finished the week on 1.6548 as a result.
Let’s move on now to see if we could do just as well against the Euro. The opening rate here was 1.1314 and we saw a nice jump up to 1.1396 on the first day of the week. However Wednesday evening saw a jump in the opposite direction, as the pound slipped back to 1.1277. Fortunately we were able to rectify things on Thursday, as we crept back up to a better rate of 1.1346.
Our third stop is the Hong Kong dollar, where the opening exchange rate was 12.711. Thankfully the lowest point of the week came the very next day, as the pound fell to 12.652. This meant the remaining few days would be better for the pound. Indeed we ended up doing better than we might have thought, ending on 12.857 in the process.
Next up is the New Zealand dollar, where we finished the previous week on 2.0538. Hopefully we could improve on this as the week went by, as the previous few weeks have been nothing short of disappointing. We did seesaw a bit through the four days of trading ahead of us, but fortunately we ended on a good note and a figure of 2.0651. It was certainly better than the losses we were becoming accustomed to.
Finally there is the Australian dollar. So far the pound has had a good week so it was somewhat inevitable to spot bad results in there as well. Here was the one we were waiting for, with an opening rate of 1.5535 dropping to 1.5388 by the time the Easter holidays had kicked in.
Notable events in the world of currency
A drop against the Canadian dollar
The British pound didn’t do brilliantly everywhere though. It managed to go from 1.5766 to 1.5688 against the Canadian dollar, for example.
A similar picture against the Swiss franc
Here was another example of the pound’s lack of hard work elsewhere. We fell from 1.4592 to 1.4581 against the Swiss franc – only a small drop but a drop nonetheless.
But there is good news against the Chinese yuan
Yes we made an improvement here, going from 10.679 to 10.746 over the course of the four days.
So at least we had some good news this time around, with the pound doing rather well against several of the major currencies. We cannot expect it to do well against all the currencies at any rate.
But other currencies were doing better in places. This report from the Bloomberg website shows that Asian currencies in particular are doing well at present. How long this will remain the case however is anyone’s guess.
Perhaps the most important thing coming up in the near future is the fact that the UK has another long weekend to look forward to. This means that although people have returned to work on a Tuesday, they will only have three days to work before the new long weekend begins. This means there could be a lack of action on the markets next time – but we shall wait and see.
This makes me wonder how the two long weekends will affect things in the UK. After all we’ve had the Easter break and now we have the long Royal wedding and May Day weekend too. It means we only get three days trading this week, so how will this affect the strength (or otherwise) of the pound? Hopefully it won’t be too bad but the big spending nature of the Royal wedding may not actually trickle through to the markets!