It would be a tough week against all but one of the main currencies we usually check on against the British pound. Let’s see what happened.
An overview of the currency markets for July 28th – August 1st 2014
Let’s see what would happen as the markets got underway this week. The British pound stood at 1.6987 against the US dollar as things got started, but this sneaked up ever so slightly to 1.6991 by Monday evening. Unfortunately we never achieved any more than this, because the remaining four days of the week saw nothing but reductions in the exchange rate. This led to a closing rate of 1.6825 on Friday evening.
So could we do any better against the Euro? We opened on 1.2639 here and although the week as a whole did see more than one good day, the overall trend was down. As such it mirrored the pattern we’d seen against the US dollar, and by the time Friday evening arrived the pound was worth 1.2561 against the Euro. Clearly this wasn’t turning out to be a good week.
It looked as though the same would be true against the Hong Kong dollar as well. Here the pound began the week on 13.165 before increasing marginally to 13.168 the following day. Unfortunately this currency pairing would follow that of the pound versus the US dollar, in that the rest of the week contained nothing but drops in the rate. This resulted in a closing rate of 13.039 on Friday – a disappointing change compared to Monday’s opening rate.
So could we hope for a better outcome against the New Zealand dollar, where things can often pan out differently from the exchange rates we’ve seen above? The starting rate was 1.9879 and here we actually dropped in value to 1.9863 on Monday. However there was a little better news when the pound rose to 1.9909 the following day. Unfortunately we then dropped back throughout the remainder of the week, leaving the pound on 1.9848 by Friday night.
It seemed as if this would be a bad week throughout all the results, and with one left to check on we shall soon know the answer. We opened on 1.8061 against the Australian dollar before dropping gradually over the first couple of days, falling to 1.8050 as a result. We did manage to put on enough in value in the next two days to ward off a total loss though, and finished Friday evening on 1.8127 as a result – a slight improvement all in all.
Notable events in the world of currency
Better results against the Canadian dollar
There were a few good results if you went looking for them. The pound rose from 1.8292 to 1.8383 against the Canadian dollar, for example.
But we experienced a fall against the Swiss franc
Here the story was very different as the pound fell from 1.5359 to 1.5278.
And another fall was seen against the Icelandic krona
Here we started on 195.546 but by the end of the week the pound was on a lower rate of 193.770.
As you can see this was a stressful week with very little to celebrate for the British pound. It’s heartening to see some good results but they were few and far between this time. We did well against the Australian dollar and against the Canadian dollar too, but that was about it as far as the main currencies were concerned. It even dropped against the Icelandic krona, which is included here as an example of how the pound was not doing well in other regions.
Perhaps we shall report on slightly better exchange rates next week, but there is a long way to go before we get excellent results across the board for the pound. We shall be assessing the results throughout the week and we’ll report back as usual next time. Maybe we’ll have better news then – but you never know how things will pan out.