Let’s not delay our report this week – we have some interesting results to share with you.
An overview of the currency markets for September 8th – September 12th 2014
The pound had a fight on its hands this week, and it began against the US dollar. The pound started on 1.6296 but fell in value over the first couple of days, taking it down to 1.6117. Fortunately we managed to put in some real effort over the next day or two, as the pound fought back to an exchange rate of 1.6245 by the time the markets closed on Thursday evening. We couldn’t quite hang on to the better rate by Friday night, but a closing rate of 1.6232 on Friday was better than we had perhaps hoped for.
Could we say the same against the euro though? Well, we started with a drop just as we had against the dollar – this time going from 1.2585 on Monday morning to 1.2463 by the evening. We did then perk up to 1.2492 by Tuesday before falling back once again. Indeed this was the pattern all week – a fall followed by a rise the next day. Unfortunately it meant we finished with a fall to 1.2553 on Friday, which was lower than we’d started with on Monday.
The pound started on 12.629 against the Hong Kong dollar on Monday morning and once again the first direction we went in was down. We’d reached 12.491 by the time Tuesday evening rolled around. Could the pound improve on this? We did over the next two days, finally reaching 12.591 by Thursday evening. However we didn’t manage to recoup any more of our losses by the time we got to Friday night. By this time we ended up on 12.581 against the Hong Kong dollar.
Now it’s time to head over to New Zealand to see whether the pound was doing well (or not) over there. The opening rate was 1.9650 and this dropped dramatically to 1.9430 on Monday. We did manage to start pulling back a little of that huge loss in the next few days though. Tuesday saw an improvement to 1.9462 and the rest of the week went the same way. In fact by the time Friday night arrived the pound was sitting on 1.9878 – a rate that had been pretty much unthinkable on Monday morning.
Finally we can see whether we would achieve a good rate against the Australian dollar as well. The pound started on 1.7401 before dropping significantly to 1.7286 on Monday evening. The remainder of the week would not produce such worries though. In fact things got much better as the week went on. By the time we got to Friday night we had achieved a virtually unthinkable improvement once more – closing on 1.7929.
Notable events in the world of currency
Better news against the Canadian dollar
Here the British pound began the week on 1.7727 and ended it rather better off on 1.7951.
A slight drop against the Swiss franc
It wasn’t all good news though. Here we started on 1.5183 and then slipped back to 1.5175 by Friday night.
Another drop against the Chinese yuan
Here too we didn’t get the result we wanted. Instead we began on 10.007 and dropped to 9.956 by the end of the week.
As you can see there were some impressive results last week here and there for the British pound. With the looming question of Scottish independence on the cards we might have expected another weakening for the pound, but it didn’t seem to happen this time around. Instead we saw some good results and the chance to grab back some of the losses we had seen last week. This at least was good news and something we were hoping we could continue to enjoy.
Perhaps by the time we get to next week we shall see more good news we can report back on. We shall see how things turn out.