It’s hard to believe that another week has passed already, but if you remember last week was one to celebrate as the pound did well against many other major currencies. The question now is this – would it be able to build on that performance and do even better this week? Let’s see what happened.
An overview of the currency markets for April 23rd – April 27th 2012
The opening rate for the British pound against the US dollar was 1.6112. We saw an immediate fall on day one to 1.6080 but this soon bounced back to 1.6140 on Tuesday evening. After another hesitant day on Wednesday the pound managed to trek on until the end of the week when it finished on 1.6225 – another good result.
But what would happen against the Euro? We started here with a rate of 1.2213 and we had a good day on Monday, giving us a slightly healthier rate of 1.2245 in the process. After some more peaks and troughs the closing rate on Friday evening was 1.2265, so again we were marginally better off than we had been on Monday morning.
Next up we have the Hong Kong dollar, where we last left things on 12.505. This was definitely turning into a week of ups and downs as we dropped back to 12.480 on Monday and then soared back to 12.526 on Tuesday. After some more toing and froing we eventually closed out a successful week on 12.590.
So with three out of three so far, could we do the same with the New Zealand dollar and also the Australian dollar? Let’s start in New Zealand first, where the pound was worth 1.9774 at the beginning of the week. It made it to 1.9829 on Monday evening, and edged up a little more to 1.9830 on Tuesday. A fall on Wednesday didn’t do any damage in the long term though, as the pound had another good result by finishing the week on 1.9830.
Finally let’s take a look at the Australian dollar. Could we make it five good results out of five for two weeks of excellent results all in all? Here we began on 1.5557 and this improved immediately to 1.5636 by Monday night. Indeed the first half of the week was looking very good but things started to fall to bits after that. In fact this would be the thorn in the pound’s side for the week, as by the end of the week we were slightly lower down on 1.5551.
Notable events in the world of currency
A marginal loss against the Canadian dollar
Clearly things were not good all round for the British pound last week, as we managed to drop from 1.5969 to 1.5940 against the Canadian dollar.
Better news against the Swiss franc however
Here we managed to up our game from 1.4677 to 1.4735 over the course of the week.
Another slight improvement against the Icelandic krona
Here too we had better news though, as the pound climbed from 203.498 to 203.812.
Perhaps the main story in the news last week did not pertain to currency directly, but it certainly had an effect on how the pound performed over the second half of the week. The UK is now in another recession – a so called double dip recession – as reported on the Bloomberg website on Wednesday.
This would undoubtedly have affected the position of the pound, although given the good results over the second half of the week it may be that the news has not yet filtered down enough to cause any real concern. It will however be interesting to see if the pound has had two good weeks, only to be followed by a bad one coming soon.
We shall be back next week to see whether this news has sent the pound into a downward spiral or whether it will buck the trend.
Bad news on the double dip, although I only remember seeing a couple of brief mentions of it last week sometime. Maybe the news channels aren’t broadcasting the fact too much, so there is no chance of making it worse? I do wonder whether bad news begets bad news sometimes, making it worse rather than inspiring people to do better.