Here we are with another regular look at the figures you would have seen on the currency converter last week. Will the British pound be in for a hard time against the other major world currencies, or will it perform well?
An overview of the currency markets for October 17th – October 21st 2011
The last time we caught up with the British pound against the US dollar, it was bringing in 1.5900. So would we be in for a good week or a bad one? Well the early news was good as we managed to climb to 1.5942 by the end of Monday evening. In fact the week as a whole was pretty good, and we managed to finish on a respectable 1.6102 by Friday evening.
But what about the pound’s standing against the Euro? Here we really wanted to see a good result, but perhaps this was not possible given the dire condition of the Euro this week. The opening rate was 1.1524 but there was no good news throughout the week thanks to the drama that went on in Europe. By Friday evening the pound was settled back on 1.1372.
Next let’s look at the Hong Kong dollar to see whether the British pound could get the better of it. The opening rate was 12.371 and things were looking up fairly soon after that as we got up to 12.401. In fact there was very little bad news in this situation because by the time Friday rolled around the British pound was on 12.506, so it was a good week there.
Our next stop is the New Zealand dollar, where we last left things on 1.9941. Things didn’t start well because we fell back to 1.9812 on Monday evening, and in fact it looked as if things weren’t going to go our way at all. The best point was Wednesday when we finished on 2.0047, but by Friday night that exchange rate was a distant memory. We ended up on 1.9697 instead.
Finally let’s see whether we could achieve much of note against the Australian dollar. Last time we managed to finish on 1.5443 and we were wondering whether we would now follow the same pattern we had seen against the New Zealand dollar. We did in fact follow it almost to the letter, as we dropped in value before picking up on Wednesday, only to fall again by the end of the week to 1.5090.
Notable events in the world of currency
A slight drop against the Canadian dollar
We fell back slightly here from 1.6084 to 1.6002 but not enough to cause any major problems.
A bigger fall against the Swiss franc
There was bad news here for the pound last week, as we fell from 1.4182 to 1.3886 over the week as a whole.
More bad news against the Indian rupee as well
Things went from bad to worse for the pound last week, as it fell from 79.543 to 78.527 against the rupee.
A story on the Reuters website last week revealed that the British pound was doing well against the US dollar. But there was worse news regarding its standing against the Euro. Here we were worth less than we had been a few weeks ago, even despite the problems the Euro has been experiencing. It has certainly been an intriguing few weeks.
Next time we will be going from October into November, ever closer to the end of the year. Plenty of people are still wondering how much longer the Euro will last for, but perhaps from our point of view we should be wondering how much we will be affected if or when it does crash completely. Rest assured we are keeping a close eye on the situation to see how the British pound is being affected by the ongoing drama.