Welcome to another currency report, which we shall get underway with no further ado.
An overview of the currency markets for April 21st – April 25th 2014
The British pound began the week at 1.6808 against the US dollar, and it didn’t move anywhere until Tuesday thanks to the extended Easter weekend. By that point it improved slightly to 1.6839. Unfortunately the slight improvement was then followed by a drop in value as it fell to 1.6790 by Wednesday evening. With only two more days of trading left it looked as though things could go either way. Fortunately while Thursday looked a little uncertain the pound did pick up again by the end of the week. As a result it closed on 1.6808 – so we were back to square one once again.
Would the same happen against the Euro? Let’s find out. When the markets returned from the Easter break on Tuesday the pound stood at 1.2131 but this immediately improved to 1.2187. However we saw the pound have a good day against the US dollar initially and then things went downhill slightly, so would the same happen here too? The pound did lose track by dropping to 1.2137 on Wednesday night before making the most of its last two days of the week. By Friday evening it had improved to 1.2152.
Over in Hong Kong we began the week on 13.033. Again there were good signs to kick off with on Tuesday as the pound rose to 13.055. We then fell back a little the following day before once again having two good days to close on. The improvements were slight but they still resulted in the pound finishing on 13.032 by Friday (even though this was slightly below the beginning rate on Tuesday).
So where would we stand against the New Zealand dollar by the time the week was over? We opened on 1.9523 after the Bank Holiday weekend and we had some good days to begin with. By the time the first day of trading was over the pound had jumped up to 1.9569. This edged up further to 1.9571 the next day. Indeed Thursday evening was better still, seeing the pound reach 1.9594 against the New Zealand dollar. We dropped a little to 1.9573 on Friday but this was still a pretty good week.
Finally let’s see whether we could replicate those results against the Australian dollar. Our opening rate was 1.7981 and while there was a marginal drop to 1.7980 on Tuesday this didn’t prove to be bad news for the week as a whole. The high point was 1.8123 on Thursday, and we then dropped back to 1.8087 on Friday night. This still left us better off than we’d been to start with.
Notable events in the world of currency
Very little movement against the Canadian dollar
You hardly noticed the difference from 1.8504 to 1.8519 last week against the Canadian currency.
Slightly better off against the Swiss franc
The opening rate here was 1.4770 and this eventually improved to 1.4819.
Another good result against the Icelandic krona
Here too the pound did quite well last week. It rose from 188.028 and ended up on 188.799.
With Easter over for another year we have now seen the second of the four day weeks that sit either side. This week seemed fairly un-dramatic all in all, although the pound did manage to improve in value against many of the currencies it went up against. The gains were small but still worth having. Hopefully we shall see those gains as just the beginning of another good week next week.
For now though we shall leave the currency markets behind, safe in the knowledge that the British pound did reasonably well for another week. With just four days to work with things can be uncertain but this did not prove to be the case this time around. Come back next week to find out more about the currency markets.