Welcome to another currency report, which this week sees the British pound attaining some interesting results. We hope that will give nothing away, but please do continue reading to find out exactly what did happen.
An overview of the currency markets for August 5th – August 9th 2013
Here we are then with a first look at how the British pound did last week. It began on 1.5152 against the US dollar and it had a particularly good start to the week, rising to 1.5339 by Monday evening. This was not the best of the week though – as it turned out there was a lot better news to come as well. In fact the only drop came on the following day, and even then the pound only fell by 0.000001! At the end of the week the pound reached a successful rate of 1.5525, marking one of the best weekly performances it had put in for a while.
Would things be the same against the Euro though? Here the opening rate was 1.1476 for the pound, and we did get a good start once again as the pound rose to 1.1570 by the end of day one. We saw a marginal slip on Tuesday and another one on Thursday in this case as well, but what would happen next? While we did have a couple of hiccups during the week the overall trend was definitely up, which resulted in the British pound finishing the week on 1.1609 – another good result.
Let’s move on to see whether we could achieve something similar against the Hong Kong dollar now. Here the pound opened things on 11.753 and once again day one proved to be a successful one. The closing rate for Monday was 11.898. Tuesday did see another marginal loss but unlike with the Euro, where Thursday also proved to be a little sticky, the pound continued to improve after that. By the time Friday night rolled around the exchange rate had gone up to an impressive 12.040.
Next up we have the New Zealand dollar, where the pound finished up on 1.9240 last week. There was a mammoth rise to close on 1.9758 on Monday night, so we might expect a slight drop back after that. This did indeed happen, as Tuesday saw a closing rate of 1.9509. While there was an improvement on Wednesday it was downhill from then on. However the pound still finished in a better position than it had started in, owing to its closing Friday night rate of 1.9367.
Finally we find ourselves up against the Australian dollar. Here the opening rate was 1.7027 and this improved to close on 1.7251 on Monday night. The highest rate of the week came on Wednesday as the pound finished on 1.7309 but it could not hold onto this rate. Instead it closed down on 1.6935 on Friday.
Notable events in the world of currency
An improvement against the Canadian dollar
The pound rose from 1.5761 to 1.5977 against the loonie.
Another good result against the Swiss franc
Here the pound rose from 1.4211 to end on 1.4291.
More good news against the Icelandic krona
If we wanted a really good week to end on a good note, we saw the pound climb from 179.725 to 183.952 as the week finished.
So it was a very good week for the pound, which looked to have renewed vigour by the time the week was over. It did start well though and achieved many notable results throughout the week. The only major disappointment was against the Australian dollar, but given the other very good results this was really nothing to be too concerned about.
We shall be back next week to see if this renewed confidence continues for another week of trading. Perhaps that would be too much to hope for, but we can only wait and find out. We’ll see you then to get the answers.