When May got underway the British pound was holding a rate of 1.5814 against the Canadian dollar. It has been faring slightly better against the Canadian currency than it has against the US dollar, so it will be interesting to see whether the pattern of holding its own continued during May.
It only took two days for the currency to drop back to 1.5715, so imagine our surprise when the pound then shot up to 1.5916 in another forty eight hours. A day later it finished the week on 1.5814. Not a bad start, but where would it go to from here?
The answer, as it turned out, was down. The pound may have had a good start to the month but it wouldn’t do well the whole way through. Just one week later it was settling on 1.5664 at the end of the week, so it was clear that there could be some ups and downs to contend with here. The only question was how many ups or downs there would be.
A high point of 1.5829 was reached during the next week, but the pound couldn’t quite hang on to its stature for the entire five days of trading. It didn’t fall too far though, ending on 1.5733 on Friday night. By this time it was the 20th May so we were two thirds of the way through the month. We had dropped below the opening rate for the month so we were wondering whether we would end up lower than we had started with overall when the month was over. The only thing left to do was wait and see.
But as it turned out the pound had a strong last week left up its sleeve. The closing rate for that week was an impressive 1.6063. There may have been a couple of odd days left to trade with after that last weekend, but they didn’t take anything away from the pound. It finished the month on 1.6036 against the Canadian dollar, and it was certainly something to celebrate.