Welcome back to another of our regular currency reports. If you thought some weeks were better than others you would be right – and this week looked to be one of the tougher ones.
An overview of the currency markets for May 11th – May 16th 2014
Let’s start in the usual place with the pound against the US dollar. The opening rate was 1.6862 and this increased slightly to 1.6886 on day one. However the pound then slipped to 1.6835 the following day before dropping further over the next 48 hours, reaching 1.6755 on Thursday evening. The one saving grace was that we managed to stall our losses by Friday as we closed on 1.6809, although this was still lower than we’d started on.
Would this be the pattern we’d follow for the rest of the week? Well, we got started on 1.2236 against the Euro and we actually had a couple of good days here to start with. The pound climbed to 1.2285 by Tuesday evening, but with three days still to go it would be hard to sustain that until Friday. Indeed we fell back to 1.2229 on Wednesday night before having another two good days to follow. This took us to 1.2272 to finish, which was better than our starting rate had been.
Onto Hong Kong now and a look at whether the pound could do well here. We opened on 13.071 and improved to 13.089 by Monday evening, although we wiped that out by dropping to 13.050 by Tuesday. When we reached a low of 12.988 by Thursday night things didn’t look at all good. Fortunately we managed to do a little better by the close of play on Friday, as we ended up on 13.030 then. This was still down on the opening rate though.
Next we’ll go to New Zealand to see whether we can get any improvement there. We opened on 1.9525 and this improved to 1.9573 on day one before dropping back markedly to 1.9472 the next day. It seemed as if we were destined for a bad week this time around. Indeed if we fast forward to Wednesday we see a rate of 1.9355 on the cards, which was the lowest of the week. At least we improved from then on, finally closing Friday on 1.9467, so we regained some of our losses there.
Our last stop is with the Australian dollar. Here we began the week on 1.8004 and marginally improved this to 1.8013 by the next day. However that’s when the bad news set in, because by Wednesday we were down to 1.7851. As with the Kiwi dollar though, Wednesday would be the worst day. We finished up on 1.7959 by Friday, but this was still down on our opening rate.
Notable events in the world of currency
A slight increase against the Canadian dollar
The pound managed to improve from 1.8262 to 1.8283 here, so there was at least a little good news to celebrate.
Better news against the Swiss franc as well
Here too there was better news. We managed to improve from the starting rate of 1.4910 to 1.4985 against the franc last week.
Another good result against the Icelandic franc
Here too we did well, rising from 188.482 and closing on 189.923 at the end of the week.
So you see there were some good results to be had last week; they were just hidden among the not so good results we had elsewhere. It could have been much worse all in all – we just had a tougher time once more. Some weeks are like that on the currency markets, bringing forth bad results and others that are at least moderately okay. Whatever happens next week, we shall be here with all the results to reveal the answers to you.
Sometimes we have better weeks than others. This wasn’t one of the better ones, but no doubt things could get a little easier further down the line.