So here we are, bedding down into the New Year with another week’s worth of currency converter results. How will the British pound do this week – will it be good news or bad to share with you?
Let’s see just how things worked out right now, with a look at its performance across the board.
An overview of the currency markets for January 9th – January 13th 2012
Let’s start as we usually do with the US dollar. Here the pound was worth 1.5459 the last time we looked, but would it go up or down from here on in?
There was little movement on day one, but what there was saw it drop to 1.5446. If this was a clue to what would happen during the rest of the week, we were mistaken to begin with, at least. The 10th saw it bounce up slightly to 1.5464. Unfortunately by the time Friday arrived the exchange rate was set at 1.5327.
So how would things progress against the Euro? Here our starting point was 1.2100 but although this rose to 1.2135 on day one, it soon dropped the following day. In the end we had a disappointing week here as well, as we fell to 1.2001 on Friday evening.
Would there be better news against the Hong Kong dollar? Our opening rate was 12.004 but we soon fell below this mark by dropping to 11.994 on day one. We might have managed to get back above it the next day, but that was as long as it lasted. We ended up dropping to 11.905 on Friday, giving us more bad news to ponder over.
It seemed to be a week of bad news, and this was borne out in New Zealand too. We started from 1.9780 and if we were hoping to go above the two dollar rate, we would have to wait a while longer to make it happen. We dropped steadily throughout the week until Thursday brought us a rate of 1.9246, although this perked up to 1.9311 on Friday. There was a little ray of sunshine to finish the week with.
Finally we have the Australian dollar to consider. Could we turn the tables and achieve something notable here? Unfortunately – and perhaps predictably – the answer was no. We started on a rate of 1.5091 and we had that same good news on Monday as we climbed to 1.5131. However from here on in it was pretty much downhill, dragging us down to 1.4839 to close out the week.
Notable events in the world of currency
Another drop in Canada
Predictably we had bad news here as well, dropping from 1.5792 to 1.5625 as a result.
Another loss against the Swiss franc
Perhaps predictably we had a loss here too, dropping from 1.47365 to 1.4522 in the process.
The Chinese yuan makes it three out of three for the pound
Here there was more bad news, as the pound lost ground and fell from 9.7639 to 9.6793.
We have seen that there has been nothing but bad news this week for the British pound. This was borne out by plenty of news stories on the topic. You can read one of them here; it pointed out how the US dollar has become a haven for those looking for a safer place to invest. Certainly the British pound has fallen in value in recent times, and the most disappointing thing is that this looks set to continue into the future as well.
We shall see just how low the pound might go in future weeks. But it has been struggling in the early days of 2012, so we can only hope that its performance improves in the future. This would be good to hope for as we try to remain as strong as we can in the face of a potential double dip recession.