How successful would the British pound be this week in terms of improving its standing against several other popular worldwide currencies? Let’s find out.
An overview of the currency markets for October 20th – October 24th 2014
Would this be a good or bad week for the British pound? It began on 1.6119 against the US dollar, and the first day was pretty good as it rose to finish on 1.6139. The next day would be promising too, ending on 1.6154. However this would be the sum total of all the good results the pound would have against the dollar until the end of the week. Over the next two days it fell to 1.6028 before finally climbing back a step to close on 1.6050 – less than it had opened with.
Would we lose against the euro as well? Here we began on 1.2570 and again the first couple of days looked rather promising. Indeed we managed to finish on 1.2658 by Tuesday evening, although we then dropped back to 1.2643 by Wednesday night. Would we struggle to end well here too? Actually nothing could be further from the truth, since the pound had another two good days in store. It finally ended the week on 1.2679.
Over we go to Hong Kong now, where the opening rate was 12.505. Again the first two days were somewhat predictable, with the pound improving over both of them to close Tuesday night on 12.530. The next couple of days did not look so good, with the Hong Kong dollar taking the upper hand and pushing the pound back to 12.434 in the process. It would be the British pound that had the last push though, as it returned to 12.451 on Friday night. The dollar had the better run over the whole week though.
Over in New Zealand the pound managed to start on 2.0289 but drop to 2.0284 by the close of day one. There were more falls in store too as the pound fell back to 2.0123 by the end of Wednesday evening. It then had two of the best days we could have hoped for, rising to 2.0388 on Thursday before hitting the heights of 2.0433 by Friday evening.
So could we achieve something similar in Australia as well? We began on 1.8349 here before rising to 1.8397 on day one. However the next three days did not go well for the British pound. By the time Thursday evening rolled around we were standing at 1.8223. We managed to pull that back slightly to 1.8252 by Friday night, but it didn’t make up for the losses we had suffered to that point.
Notable events in the world of currency
A drop against the Canadian dollar
The pound had a bad time here too, as it dropped from 1.8121 to 1.7992 over the week as a whole.
Better news against the Swiss franc
Here we had a better time of it this week, starting on 1.5177 and rising to 1.5290 in the end.
Another good result against the Icelandic krona
Although the pound dipped midweek here, the overall picture was good. It began on 193.008 and ended up on 194.056.
So all in all it wasn’t a bad week for the pound, even though it did not do well in every area. We will always get results that don’t agree with us, and with so many world events having an impact on the currency markets it is usually quite difficult to predict how one currency will perform against another. We can however pick out some fairly strong showings from the pound this week, in particular against the New Zealand dollar.
Time will tell whether we can hang onto that high exchange rate for another week, or whether it will be brought down somewhat instead. Whatever happens we shall be watching and we’ll be back with all the latest news at the beginning of next week.