There would be no Friday 13th to cast a potential pall over the results on the currency markets this week. But would that translate into good fortune for the British pound or not?
An overview of the currency markets for May 16th – May 20th 2016
The pound began on 1.4408 against the US dollar, and we had far from the best start, falling to 1.4370 by Monday night. However, it was early days, and as it turned out, the next three days were far better. This meant that by Thursday evening, we were in a far better position at a rate of 1.4620. Could we hold onto that rate for one more day? Not quite, but we did end up keeping most of the improvements, by falling to a closing rate of 1.4568.
So with that important result to boost our confidence, could we deliver a similar result against the euro? Here, we began on 1.2697 before falling to 1.2690 on Monday night – only a small drop. However, we then had the same three strong days we had seen against the dollar. This resulted in a closing rate of 1.3057 on Thursday. We then had a drop to close out the week, mirroring the pattern seen elsewhere. But this did still leave us in better shape on 1.2985.
By now, we knew the type of pattern to expect elsewhere, if things were to go according to plan. And where the Hong Kong dollar was concerned, at least, that same pattern was seen once again. We started trading on 11.185 before falling to 11.156 on Monday night. Three good days then followed, leaving the pound in a much stronger position of 11.355 on Thursday evening. The final day of the week delivered the predictable loss, dropping us down to 11.315, but once again we still finished up in better shape than we had been on Monday morning.
So now we come to the New Zealand dollar, where things can often be very different indeed. Whatever pattern we see here could well be seen again where the Australian dollar is concerned, so what is going to happen? To begin, we dropped from 2.1194 to 2.1138 on Monday. And then, we saw the exact same pattern we had seen elsewhere as well. This led to three good days (taking us to 2.1693 on Thursday night) and finally one not-so-good one, dropping us back to a still-impressive 2.1527 on Friday.
We had achieved four excellent results so far. Could we make it five out of five here? The pound began trading on 1.9780 against the Aussie dollar, before falling to 1.9703 at the end of that first day. And yes, we then had three good ones to follow, taking the pound to an incredible 2.0321 on Thursday evening. This meant we could afford to drop back to 2.0152 on Friday, as we did, because we still gained an impressive amount across the week as a whole.
Notable events in the world of currency
Great news against the Canadian dollar too
Here we did well across the first four days before experiencing a slight drop. This took the pound from 1.8561 to 1.9094 by the week’s end.
The same strong pattern was seen against the Swiss franc too
Here we began on 1.3997 before rising steadily to close out the week on 1.4443.
One final piece of good news
We even did well against the likes of the Icelandic krona, where the pound started on 177.186 before finishing a few days later on 181.458.
There is little reason to point out what a strong week this was for the British pound. Rarely do we get a week as strong as this, where the currency does well in all quarters. These were not merely reasonably good results – they were solid and very appreciable as well.
Perhaps there are greater heights to scale than these, but we have yet to find out. We shall reveal more next week.