Welcome back, and welcome to a week of drama and surprising results for the British pound. What would be the position by the end of this week?
An overview of the currency markets for November 7th – November 11th 2016
As the new week got underway, the British pound began trading on 1.2490 versus the US dollar. We had far from a good start, too – from that point, we had three bad days that took us down to a weaker position of 1.2380 by Wednesday afternoon. What would the remaining two days have in store for us? As it turned out, we had a much better end to the week than beginning. By Friday night, after two strong performances, the pound closed on 1.2659.
So, could we replicate this result against the euro as well? The early picture was not as harsh here, as we had just two days of bad results instead of three. We began trading on 1.1260 before falling back to 1.1224 by Tuesday evening. By the time we had gone through the next three days, though, we had achieved a much better rate of 1.1609 by the end of the week – an increase of 0.0349 since Monday morning.
Moving on to our relationship with the Hong Kong dollar now, we have a similar picture to contend with here as well. We began trading on 9.6876 before falling over the next three days – much as we had against the US dollar. Here, it meant we ended Wednesday evening on 9.5997. But again, we had two good days to come, and this meant we achieved our best rate of the week at the last minute on Friday night. It led to a closing rate of 9.8212 for the pound this week, making this the third good result in a row thus far.
Could we make it four in a row by doing well against the New Zealand dollar too? We began on Monday with 1.7080 recorded against the Kiwi currency. From there, we had two poor performances that took us down to 1.6904 by Tuesday evening. As you might guess, though, things got better from that moment on, and by Friday evening the pound had put in three good days with the best saved until last. This saw the pound close on an impressive 1.7604 for the week.
Finally, we can almost guess what would happen against the Australian dollar. While you can never be certain what will occur here, you can be fairly sure the pound would come out on top. Following four excellent results elsewhere, we expected a poor start and a much healthier finish – and indeed, that is what we got. The opening rate was 1.6257 for Monday, and we then experienced the same two rough days we’d seen elsewhere, so the pound fell to 1.6087 by Tuesday night. After that, we had three better days and that meant the closing rate for the entire week was a healthier 1.6646 – again, an outstanding finish that meant we had five good results for the week.
Notable events in the world of currency
More good news against the Canadian dollar
The pound did well on this side of the world too, leading to a rise from 1.6778 to 1.7079 by the close of play on Friday night.
Better news kept on coming against the Swiss franc
We had already seen how well the pound did against the euro, and it did well against the Swiss currency too, rising from 1.2131 to 1.2459 this week.
The pound gets the better of the krona too
The Icelandic krona was no match for the pound either, as the British currency rose from 138.366 to 141.539 this week.
We haven’t had a week with good news like that for some time, so it is heartening to bring some to you. However, it could come at a price, for the result of the court case that threatens to derail Brexit is the cause of the changes. What will happen next?