Welcome back to another currency report, focusing as always on the performance put in by the British pound against a variety of major currencies. Would it come out on top this time around?
An overview of the currency markets for May 5th – May 9th 2014
Here we go with another week’s worth of results. The British pound started things off on 1.6876 against the US dollar, and we didn’t get the best start either. On Monday evening we were slightly lower on 1.6859. After that we had one good day that saw us rise to 1.6982 and then we didn’t see a higher rate all week. In fact we ended up on 1.6862 on Friday night, slightly lower than we’d begun on.
So would this set the tone for the week? We started on 1.2174 against the Euro and dropped to 1.2151 by the end of day one, so we did wonder whether this would be a week to forget. There were a few days of ups and downs following this early loss, but by the time Friday arrived it was clear we were saving the best result for the close of the week. We finished up on 1.2236 on Friday, giving us one good result to celebrate at least.
Over in Hong Kong, the British pound had a rate of 13.083 to start with, but this soon dropped as well, falling to 13.070 on Monday. Once again though we then bounced back the next day, rising to 13.164 before struggling over the next couple of days. Would the last day of the week be better or worse than this? As it turned out we ended things with a rate of 13.071, so we couldn’t quite get the finishing streak we wanted.
The fourth stop on our journey is as always New Zealand, where we’ll see if the pound could put on an impressive performance against the Kiwi dollar. The opening rate was 1.9510 and this immediately dropped to 1.9437 on Monday night. Another drop to 1.9374 occurred the following day, which made us wonder whether we could claw anything back by the end of the week. The good news was the claw back began the following day, and by Friday night we closed on 1.9525.
Finally we can see whether we did any better against the Australian dollar. The opening rate was 1.8226 but we weren’t able to better that on day one, when we dropped to 1.8197. In fact we weren’t able to better it for the entire week. By the time the week ended we finished up on 1.8004.
Notable events in the world of currency
A significant drop against the Canadian dollar
Here we were worse off by the time the week ended, as we sank from 1.8504 to 1.8262.
A slight improvement against the Swiss franc
While it looked debatable for a while, we did manage to improve against the Swiss franc as the week went on. We began on 1.4839 and closed things out on 1.4910.
A slight drop against the Icelandic krona
Here we did well during the week from the starting point of 188.661, but we eventually dropped back to 188.482 by Friday night.
So this was really a week of hard fought victories where we did find them, and little else to celebrate. We lost ground against some currencies as well, which is never a good thing, but it is inevitable that it will happen in some situations.
Perhaps we can hope for a stronger performance all round next week, but it remains to be seen whether hope can translate into a solid performance. The British pound often struggles in some areas and we don’t often see an excellent result, but we may just get better news next time around.
Whatever the end result may be, we shall be monitoring the latest results to see whether the pound can achieve anything better.