Welcome back to another week of currency results to look at. Will this be a good week for the British pound or will there be other problems getting in the way that could prove to be difficult? The currency converter has revealed some interesting results this time around so let’s see what they are.
An overview of the currency markets for May 9th – May 13th 2011
The last time we caught up with the British pound against the US dollar it had an exchange rate of 1.6405 to close out the week with. It soon started dropping in the new week though, with 1.6374 on the table just one day into it. Things didn’t get much better than that either, and by the time the week was over the currency had actually achieved its lowest rate for the whole week. This left it on 1.6265.
The question now was whether the pound would be able to achieve anything better against the Euro. Here the last rate we had was 1.1313, after a good week last time around. The first day brought good news as the pound went up to 1.1373 and the general trend continued after that to bring us to 1.1492 by Thursday night. Unfortunately we then lost ground and finished the week on 1.1390.
We lost a small amount of ground against the Hong Kong dollar last time, leaving us on 12.748 as a result. We did manage to get as high as 12.814 this week after a few days, but unfortunately it wasn’t the exchange rate we finished on. Two days later the rate we ended on turned out to be 12.640.
We had a reasonable week the last time we checked out the New Zealand dollar, so two good weeks in a row would be good here. Our starting point was 2.0843 but it soon became clear that we wouldn’t get what we wanted. On Monday night we finished on 2.0675. By Wednesday we had crawled back up to 2.0756 but it wasn’t enough to bring us to the successful conclusion we wanted. Instead we ended up with a closing rate for the week of 2.0498.
So our final stop is as always the Australian dollar. Would we do better than the closing rate of 1.5364 from last week? Two days in it seemed the answer would be no, as we fell back to 1.5144. Another two days went by and we were on 1.5320 instead, which looked better. But the week was destined to end on a disappointing 1.5227.
So we were far from being able to celebrate a raft of good results this week at least.
Notable events in the world of currency
A poor showing for the British pound against the Canadian dollar too
Things went badly for the pound elsewhere too last week. It fell from 1.5814 to 1.5664 against the Canadian dollar by the time the week was out.
A further drop against the Chinese yuan
There was another drop in store for the pound here too, as it gave up its exchange rate of 10.652 and swapped it for a lower rate of 10.569 by the end of the week.
Lower against the Egyptian pound as well
There wasn’t much good news to find for the British pound last week. It fell from 9.7520 to 9.6518 against the Egyptian pound too.
You may have read something in the news about currency wars taking place in recent times. There were more reports of this last week too, as FT.com reported. You will need to sign up for a free limited account at FT.com to read this article, but it gives you limited access to the site each month. It’s certainly worth reading and it gives you a better idea of what currency wars are all about, and what is occurring in this particular one.
It seems to be quite a consistent pattern that we have poor results from the pound at the moment. Every now and then we see a reasonable one, but I can’t remember seeing a good result for weeks now. Perhaps we are a long way from seeing a stronger pound, but I will still be hoping to do so at one time or another. Meanwhile this particular report is disappointing when you want to see stronger results.