Last time we had a mix of results to consider once all was said and done. The pound had certainly seen worse weeks on the currency converter, but there had been better ones too.
So how will it perform this week? There’s only one way to find out.
An overview of the currency markets for August 1st – August 5th 2011
So let’s start in the usual way by seeing how the pound did against the US dollar last week. The starting rate was 1.6260, and thankfully it was one of those weeks where everything went right for the pound. It steadily rose throughout the week and ended up worth 1.6541 by the close of play on Friday. This was an impressive increase of over two and a half cents.
Over to the Euro now, where we had an opening rate of 1.1410 to start from. Could we increase the rate by the same amount here as well?
It was a different pattern with a drop to 1.1383 during the week. But eventually we pulled things back to 1.1498 by the time Friday evening rolled around.
Next up it’s the turn of the Hong Kong dollar to fall under the spotlight. The opening rate here for the pound was 12.677, and thankfully the pattern followed that of the US dollar rather than the Euro. From day one the pound increased its value against the currency, and by Friday the currency was worth a much higher 12.901 instead. This looked to be a good week thus far at least.
Last week we had a good run against the New Zealand dollar, and as things turned out the pattern would be repeated this week as well. We started on 1.9653 and even though we had a good start followed by a dip midweek, we ended up on 2.0012 in the end. More good news for the pound, it seemed.
So finally we come to the Australian dollar. Would this make it five good results out of five? The opening rate was 1.5724 but to begin with it seemed like the only direction the pound would go in was down. By the 17th we were down to 1.5595. But we pulled things back once again to finish on an encouraging 1.5848 by the close of play.
Notable events in the world of currency
A healthy rise against the Canadian dollar too
The pound shot up from 1.6047 to 1.6315 over the course of the week too, giving us another good result to celebrate.
More good news against the Swiss franc
Here we had another good result, shooting up from 1.2533 to an impressive 1.3039. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Another leap up – this time against the Indian rupee
This time the result saw the pound increase its standing from 73.734 to 75.675 over the week.
This story came out on Saturday, the day after the trading week ended. It concerns the huge achievement of the Japanese yen, achieving its best rate against the US dollar since the Second World War. You can read more here.
So it’s been an interesting week for sure. We have seen lots of good news coming in for the pound, not just in the five main currencies we look at but also in the snapshots given above. The real question though is whether this will be able to continue. Will we see a sudden drop in the value of the pound over the next week, or will we be able to report another rise for the currency?
It’s too early to tell; as we are writing this the new trading week is only just getting underway. But we can hope that the pound has enough strength to continue this good run of results. We’ll be back next week to see if that has indeed happened. See you then.