Are you ready for some fascinating explorations of the currency markets last week? The British pound certainly put in a good effort here.
An overview of the currency markets for February 2nd – February 6th 2015
Here we are then with the next fresh week of results for you. Starting with the British pound against the US dollar, the opening rate was 1.5051. Unfortunately this dropped on day one, falling slightly to 1.5027 as a result. However from that moment on things were definitely looking up. Indeed we managed to get in a good performance every single day from then on. This meant that by the time we reached Friday evening the pound was on 1.5317. This was an improvement of more than two and a half cents since the opening rate on Monday morning.
Could we do something similar where the euro was concerned? Let’s find out. Our opening rate here was 1.3313 but this dropped to 1.3287 by Monday evening. We then experienced another fall on Tuesday as the pound slipped back a little further, this time to 1.3263. Were we in for a disappointing week here? Actually it turned out the answer was no. From that moment on we had three good days that saw us achieve a closing rate for the week of 1.3381 on Friday. It wasn’t as big an improvement as we’d seen against the US dollar, but it still put the pound ahead of the euro for the week as a whole.
Over now to another dollar – this time in Hong Kong. The pound didn’t start well here, falling from 11.667 to 11.653, but the week as a whole matched that seen against the US dollar. We managed to get ahead from that point on and had four great days all in a row. This resulted in the pound rising to 11.874 by the time the markets closed for the weekend. The pound had increased by 0.207 over the entire week – another great result.
As things turned out it would be a very different – and slightly rocky – picture against the New Zealand dollar. We began the week on 2.0726 here, and despite a drop to 2.0677 on day one we reached 2.0879 by Tuesday evening. However we then dropped back to 2.0604 the following day, so it was an uncertain picture. We did manage to improve on things over the next couple of days though, pulling back some of those initial losses. So by the time Friday evening arrived the pound had finished on 2.0626 – a cent down on its opening rate for the week.
Finally in Australia the British pound started things off on 1.9351 against the Aussie dollar before falling back to 1.9297 on Monday night. The rise to 1.9628 on Tuesday would have been a shock, although things levelled off to an extent with losses over each of the next three days. We did still finish on 1.9499 though, which was better than the rates we’d seen over the remainder of the week.
Notable events in the world of currency
A slight drop against the Canadian dollar
Disappointment for the pound here as it slipped from 1.9069 to 1.9063 overall.
More encouraging news against the Swiss franc
Here the pound managed to rise from the opening rate of 1.3936 to 1.4096 from start to finish (it also reached a high of 1.4149 on Thursday).
Another rise against the Icelandic krona
Here too the pound managed some healthy results. It went from 200.507 on Monday morning to 201.037 on Friday.
As we can see, all in all it wasn’t a bad week for the British pound. Some weeks would definitely be better than others, and this looked to be one of them. There were no real eye-opening results but the pound did achieve results for the most part where it needed them. Could it manage to do the same for another week? We’ll find out next week.