We already know the pound had a good week last week, but that doesn’t mean it was all plain sailing, as you are about to find out.
An overview of the currency markets for March 20th – March 24th 2017
As the week began, the pound was worth 1.2360 against the US dollar. Would this last? Well, the pound had a very good start to the week that lasted a full four days. It rose to 1.2388 on Monday, and then backed that up with three more excellent days that took it to 1.2502 by Thursday evening. So, while it fell to 1.2476 on Friday night, this was still better than the exchange rate we had begun the week with.
After that good start, would we experience something similar against the euro? The short answer was no, because we did well over the first two days (rising from 1.1511 to 1.1526) but then did badly. We had one bad day, dropping to 1.1522, so only a small drop there, but the rest of the week was mixed as well. This meant that by Friday night, the British pound stood at 1.1547 against the euro – still slightly better than we’d started on, though.
Over in Hong Kong, the pound stood at 9.5952 to begin the week against their dollar. We had a similarly encouraging start here as we had against the US dollar, meaning four good days of trading were in the offing. By the time Thursday evening rolled around, the pound stood at 9.7110. So, while we slipped to 9.6920 on Friday, we had already done enough work to guarantee a good finish to the week.
Our next stop is to see how the pound performed against the New Zealand dollar. This was slightly different to the performances seen against other dollar currencies. The reason for this was that the pound had a poor first day, falling from its opening rate of 1.7633 to 1.7594. However, the remainder of the week was good news all the way. We managed to push ahead to close out Friday night on 1.7784, which was indeed good news.
So, where would we be left against the Australian dollar? Well, we had a reasonably good week here, too. We opened trading on 1.6047 and although we fell to 1.6040 that day, we followed up with three good days after it. So, by Thursday night, the pound was standing at 1.6380. We only sustained a small drop on the final day of the week, so the pound had done well in finishing on 1.6376 this week.
Notable events in the world of currency
Good news against the Canadian dollar as well
It’s nice to back up our results so far with more good news here. The pound climbed from 1.6457 to 1.6683 against the Canadian currency last week.
A slight rise in store against the Swiss franc, too
Here, too, the news was good. The pound managed to edge ahead from the opening rate of 1.2315 to finish the week on 1.2376.
More of the same against the Icelandic krona
Here, the pound managed to move ahead from 134.170 to 137.824 this week, so there was some good news here as well.
So, the week was encouraging in terms of the British pound’s performance against a range of currencies. This may not necessarily translate into good news for the forthcoming weeks, as we know, but at least we have some encouraging news this time around.
The formal notification of Britain’s exit from the EU is due to be given on 30th March, so it will be interesting to see whether this influences the pound’s standing on the currency markets. It may well do, and we can guess which way things will go if this proves to be the case. We shall be watching closely to see what happens, and whether the outcome will be good or bad for the British pound. Make sure you don’t miss next week’s report.