Last week wasn’t the best performance we have ever seen from the pound. But perhaps this week will be a little better? Let’s see whether the British pound was able to stand up against the likes of the Euro and the US dollar last time, shall we?
An overview of the currency markets for January 16th – January 20th 2012
The last time we caught up with the pound against the US dollar, we had an exchange rate of 1.5327 to contend with. This was lower than the rates experienced earlier in the month, so could we improve on it now? The earliest sign wasn’t good as we immediately dropped to 1.5310 on day one. But then we improved through the week, even though it was an up and down affair. Eventually we ended up better off on 1.5471.
So with that good result under our belts, could we achieve another good result elsewhere as well? Last time around we were standing at 1.2001 against the Euro, but unlike the US dollar we had a good first day on the markets this time. The currency converter saw us finish the day on 1.2085. Unfortunately that was as good as things would get, as we took a nosedive and ended up finishing the week on a disappointing 1.1991 after that.
Let’s see how we did against the Hong Kong dollar now. The exchange rate here was 11.905 when we started, but although we fell back on day one to 11.894, that would turn out to be the worst result of the week. After that it was almost completely good news, and we finished on 12.009.
But where would we stand against the New Zealand dollar? Could we hope to achieve better news here this time around? We started on 1.9311 to kick off the new week, but it would turn out that this would be a seesaw week of changes. We climbed to 1.9314 on Monday evening, but dropped to 1.9081 by Wednesday. Fortunately we improved a bit by the time the week was over, settling on 1.9272 by Friday night; still down on the start of the week though.
Our last stop is as always Australia. Here we began the week on 1.4839, but again the pound’s performance was a little uncertain. There was a marginal improvement on day one before we fell back to 1.4785. We did however improve after this and managed to improve to 1.4844 by the end of the week, showing a slight jump up compared to where we started.
Notable events in the world of currency
Things are looking up against the Canadian dollar
Here we took a small jump up from 1.5625 to 1.5680.
But the Swiss franc gets the better of us
The pound started the week on 1.4522 but could not withstand the onslaught of the Swiss franc. As such we dropped back to 1.4482 by the time the week was over.
Another disappointing drop against the Hungarian forint
Here the pound fell from 371.711 to 365.367 during the week – not the kind of result we wanted to experience.
Even though the British pound had a disappointing week in many cases, it was not the only currency to suffer some problems. The Aussie and New Zealand dollars also had some tough times in certain respects, as this report from the Bloomberg website shows.
So it would seem as if we shall have to wait a bit longer to see any notable improvement from the pound’s position in the currency markets. Even though the likes of the Euro and the Australian and Kiwi dollars were having their problems last week, the pound could not capitalise. Perhaps this will happen in the near future instead? We shall see.
In any event we will be here again next week, hopefully with better news regarding the strength of the British pound.
I must say I find the pound’s performance disappointing at the moment. I wonder why it isn’t doing better than it is. With the woes of the Euro clearly in its sights, I would have thought it was capable of doing better and gaining a healthier exchange rate against it. Clearly I was wrong, unless it has something up its sleeve to share with us in the future. I for one will be watching.