Welcome to another detailed report on the progress of the British pound. Would it manage to overcome the challenges thrown at it this week? Let’s find out.
An overview of the currency markets for February 17th – February 21st 2014
Valentine’s Day is well behind us now, and it is time to begin a new week of information from the currency markets. On Monday morning the British pound stood at 1.6708 against the US dollar, and this improved a little over the course of the day, reaching 1.6729 by the day’s end. Things did not continue in the same vein though, as the pound slipped back to a low of 1.6658 on Wednesday before recovering slightly to close on 1.6678 by Friday evening.
A similar pattern would be evidenced against the Euro too. Here the pound began on 1.2189 and improved to 1.2212 the next day, before slipping back once more. Again the lowest point proved to be Wednesday, when the pound closed on 1.2119. Fortunately we saw another couple of days’ worth of good news as the British currency managed to increase to 1.2167 by Friday night.
So would we be in with a similar pattern against the other three currencies we normally check as well? Hong Kong would be our third stop as usual, and here once again the graph did look remarkably familiar. There was an improvement on the starting rate of 12.958 as we finished on 12.974 on day one. And once again things then started to slide, leading us to a finishing rate of 12.919 on Wednesday. By the time another two days of trading had finished, the pound had recovered to finish with a rate of 12.936 but this still meant we had some challenges to think about in the week ahead.
Over we go now to New Zealand, where the British pound opened with a rate of 1.9965. We managed to improve to 2.0068 by Tuesday evening but this was the point at which things started to slide against the other currencies. It slid a little too here as well, to 2.0015, but after that we actually got the better of the situation. This led to a successful finishing rate of 2.0147 on Friday evening.
So could we get a similarly good rate against the Australian dollar as well? This very often mirrors the New Zealand dollar quite closely, so we were hopeful as the week began on 1.8499 for the pound. This improved to 1.8512 by Monday evening before dropping back to 1.8476 on Tuesday. Fortunately in this case the bad results occurred midweek rather than at the end of it. This meant the pound could finish strongly, reaching 1.8596 as a result.
Notable events in the world of currency
A success against the Canadian dollar
The pound certainly had a good run here, moving up from 1.8305 to 1.8621 across the week.
A small loss against the Swiss franc
It wasn’t all good news this week though, as the pound fell from an opening rate of 1.4897 to 1.4838 against the Swiss currency.
Another loss against the Icelandic krona
Here the pound lost more ground, this time falling from 191.013 to 188.851.
As you can see the week was certainly not predictable in any sense. Sometimes we saw notable improvements by the pound and these were evidenced in some parts of the world this week. However they were not always easy to see. In some other areas the pound definitely lost out – we can see this even from the three additional results we have listed above. It certainly makes it difficult to see whether the pound could succeed in some areas over others – there was a degree of ‘wait and see’ about the entire process this week.
Rest assured we will continue to keep a close eye on the progress of the British pound though, and we shall have more news to report back with very soon. Make sure you are here for it.