Welcome back to yet another currency report, as we take a look at the next week in February and how the British pound did during that time.
An overview of the currency markets for February 15th – February 19th 2016
So as we begin, we can see the British pound was worth 1.4504 against the US dollar at the start of the week. However, this week would prove to be a struggle for the pound, as it experienced three poor days to start things off. By Wednesday evening, it had dropped back to 1.4307 – quite a drop, and the week wasn’t over yet. It did put in some effort the following day, taking the exchange rate back to 1.4368 as a result, but it wasn’t enough to sustain the currency through to the end of the week. Instead, the pound fell to 1.4277 on Friday.
The pound began trading at 1.2864 against the euro this week. It did rather better on day one than it had against the dollar, taking it to 1.2953 as a result. However, this was followed by two falls that meant the pound finished Wednesday evening on 1.2847. The rest of the week went like this – an up followed by a down, but fortunately for us, the up was sufficient to make the down irrelevant. We finished the week slightly higher than we’d start it, this time on 1.2867.
Over to Hong Kong now, where the British pound began trading on 11.296 this week. The pattern here, as soon became clear, was to follow that seen against the US dollar. This meant the overall news was not good. We lost too much in the first three days – taking us to 11.147 by Wednesday evening – to make us able to regain those losses. Thus, by the time Friday night arrived, the pound had slid down to 11.100, after a minor perk-up on Thursday.
Our next stop in the list of major currencies is New Zealand. We began trading on Monday morning on 2.1824, and while this dropped to 2.1725 on Monday evening, we regained virtually all those losses the next day. However, that would turn out to be the best news we would have all day. We eventually ended up falling back over the remaining three days of the week to a disappointing 2.1567 by Friday evening. This equated to quite a significant loss over the space of the week as a whole.
We often see a similar picture against the Australian dollar when compared to the one we see against the New Zealand dollar. Alas, this would be one of those weeks. We began trading on 2.0455 on Monday, but by the time we had reached Wednesday night, that exchange rate was long gone, to be replaced with 2.0079 instead. We regained a little on Thursday, but then dropped back again on the final day of the week. It meant we ended things on 2.0079 this week.
Notable events in the world of currency
Another notable loss – this time against the Canadian dollar
This result was even worse than the ones we have already seen above. Here, the pound went from 2.0194 to 1.9653 in five short days.
Better news against the Swiss franc
At least we have good news to bring you here, as the Swiss franc could not stand up against the pound. Sterling started the week on 1.4136 and finished it on 1.4176.
Another piece of good news against the Icelandic krona
Here the pound started on 183.205, before improving slightly towards the end of the week, this time finishing on 183.514.
So there we are – not the best week for the British pound, and certainly not a good one in terms of where we stood at the end of it. It is one thing to hope that eventually we could perform better, but who knows where the uncertainty over EU membership will leave us? This is something that could have an effect as we move forwards in future weeks.