Here we are again, poised to take another close look at what has been occurring on the currency markets. Will the British pound have a better week than last time, or will it lose more ground against the major currencies? Let’s see what happened.
An overview of the currency markets for May 23rd – May 27th 2011
The closing rate last time for the pound versus the US dollar was 1.6232. Could it achieve more on the currency converter this time? Things didn’t look promising initially as the pound dropped to 1.6119 on day one of the new week. Thankfully though that would be as far as it would go, and eventually it soared up to an impressive 1.6456 by the end of the week. So it was a good start here at least.
But what of the Euro? Could the pound do well there as well? We did have a slight increase the week before which left us on 1.1401. Another increase to 1.1497 on day one here was a promising start. Luckily too we managed to achieve the week’s highest rate on the final day of the week, as the pound went up to 1.1536 against the Euro.
So it is two out of two so far. Can we make it three out of three as we progress to check out the Hong Kong dollar? The opening rate was 12.617 and once again we had a drop on day one. But since this had occurred against the US dollar and the Euro we were looking for what happened later on in the week. We did indeed see a rise here as well, leaving us on an appreciable 12.805 by the end of the week.
Our next stop is in New Zealand, where we finished the previous week on 2.0417. Here though the pattern would be very different. We would end up being lower down the scale than we were to begin with, as we ended up on 2.0163 at the close of play on Friday night. It was a disappointing result, especially after we had done so well elsewhere.
So where would we finish up against the Australian dollar? This currency is very often like the results we see against the New Zealand dollar, so did that mean we were in for a lower result?
The opening rate was 1.5237 and by Monday night things did look promising with a rise to 1.5328. But could we keep it up? The 25th brought the best result of the week, with an increase to 1.5450 against the dollar. But the pound couldn’t quite hang onto it until the end of the week. It still ended better off though, on 1.5395 against the dollar.
Notable events in the world of currency
A notable rise against the Canadian dollar
The British pound did very well here, rising from 1.5733 to an impressive 1.6063 by the end of the week.
But a drop against the Swiss franc
It wasn’t all good news though, as the pound fell from 1.4226 to 1.4098 against the Swiss franc.
However there was better news against the Chinese yuan
Here we did better, climbing from 10.538 to 10.684 over the course of the week.
We may think we are struggling against the Euro at the moment but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. A recent news report on the Reuters website indicated that the Euro has now fallen to a low not seen in two and a half months. This makes us wonder where the Euro will be in the future, and whether the pound can strengthen its position against the European single currency.
We will certainly be watching to see what happens so we can identify whether the single currency is in real trouble. We will be back next week with the latest in our series of reports on the British pound and how it is performing.