Last time we had some reasonable results for the British pound, but you can never be sure whether such results will last over a longer period of time. Does this mean the currency converter will reveal some poor results this week or not? Let’s find out.
An overview of the currency markets for June 20th – June 24th 2011
The pound had a bad showing against the US dollar last time, ending on 1.6168 as a result. Two days into the new week it had managed to improve things to 1.6209 so this at least was a good sign. However it didn’t last and by the time the week was over we were back down to a lowly 1.6003 instead.
Could we do better elsewhere – against the Euro perhaps? Here we had left behind an exchange rate of 1.1330 after having had a good week last time around. It was not the best week we could have had though, as we dropped to a low of 1.1196 and then climbed back to 1.1254 by the end of the week. We could have done better than that, but at least we didn’t lose out on too much ground.
Moving on let’s see whether we could go higher than the 12.604 we finished last week on against the Hong Kong dollar. The highest point of the week was 12.626 but unfortunately this did not occur on Friday night. Instead it happened a couple of days into the week, and this meant we had a few days left to fall back to 12.466. A disappointment to be sure.
Last week we slipped just under the two dollar mark with the New Zealand dollar, falling to 1.9997 in the process. By Monday night we were back to 2.0081 but that was as good as things got all week. Unfortunately we then went into freefall and finished up on a disappointing 1.9674 for the end of the week.
Finally we have one more stop to make – the Australian dollar. Here we were starting with a rate of 1.5227. We peaked with a rate of 1.5381 on Monday and then followed the pattern we had seen in New Zealand. We finished on 1.5162 for the week as a whole – another disappointing result.
Notable events in the world of currency
Falling against the Canadian dollar
It was not the best week for the pound as it dropped from 1.5824 to 1.5712 against the Canadian currency.
Another fall against the Chilean currency too
We don’t always look at this currency, but it did better than the pound last week. The pound dropped from 762.826 to 758.922 across the week.
Disappointment against the Icelandic currency too
Here the pound dropped back from 188.993 to 186.275 over the course of the week.
So we can see that the pound had a somewhat disappointing week here. But it is not the only currency to be struggling at the moment. The other currency that is having some problems is the Euro. Greece is in debt and this is causing pressure on the single currency. This was evident from this news story seen at FT.com last week.
It will be interesting to see how the pound copes with standing up to its fellow major currencies in the weeks to come. It has certainly gone through a few trying weeks (if not months) and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of this abating just yet.
Perhaps most telling is the fact that the pound is struggling against the Euro as well as the other currencies. The Euro is having problems of its own at the moment, since it is having to struggle against debt problems in the Euro zone. If one country is affected they all are, and this situation is not going to be amended or solved anytime soon.
We shall be back with more news next week.
I just wonder whether the Euro is going to continue struggling with all this debt business concerning Greece. It’s not the only country to struggle either, and that means we could end up with a long term situation where the Euro isn’t worth a fraction of what it used to be. It’s a shame the pound cannot seem to capitalise on this state of affairs, although I know things are a lot more complicated than they seem.
I can’t really understand what on earth is going on in Europe at the moment. It just seems to be a big mess of countries that are keen on meddling in small things and yet they cannot get the big national debts and other stuff sorted out. The pound may not be the strongest currency of the lot but I’d rather have that than the Euro any day! Does anyone else agree with me?
Personally I would like to see a stronger pound when it comes to the exchange rate with the Euro. It would mean I could import goods more cheaply than I can at the moment. However with that said I like to keep everything within this country if I can in terms of getting stock and materials cheaply. It isn’t always possible though, sadly. It is a fine balancing act between the two.