Welcome to another currency report, which this week bridges the end of May and the beginning of June, as the year hurtles towards its midpoint. Will it be a year to remember on the currency markets for the right reasons?
An overview of the currency markets for May 29th – June 2nd, 2017
The week opened with the British pound worth 1.2840 against the US dollar. This soon improved to 1.2846 by the end of that day, giving us hope we could expect a better week than last week. We improved further on Tuesday, rising to 1.2873 in the process. The remaining days told a different story, though, with ups and downs to contend with. Friday saw another drop, for instance, from the 1.2861 rate we had seen the day before. This meant the pound finished on 1.2853 this week – slightly better than its opening rate had been.
Over in Europe, we began on 1.1469 against the euro, before enjoying the same two strong opening days we had against the American currency. This took us to 1.1521 by Tuesday night. We then experienced the same pattern of ups and downs we had seen against that currency, too, which meant the closing rate for this week against the euro was recorded as 1.1458. Here, then, we were slightly down on our opening position.
With one good and one not-so-good result thus far, it was difficult to predict how things would turn out against the Hong Kong dollar. Would we follow the path we had taken against the American dollar, and enjoy a slight rise? The overall pattern of two good days, followed by one bad, one good, and another bad would be replicated here. We opened on 10.006 and rose to 10.031 by Tuesday’s close of play. That would be our best rate, as we closed on 10.016 on Friday night. At least that was a small improvement.
Now for the New Zealand dollar, which is often unpredictable with the exchange rate. We began trading on 1.8185 before going through ups and downs throughout the entire week. Unfortunately, this meant we would lose ground here, and we ended up much lower on 1.8117 because of this testing times. Perhaps next week, we can regain some of those losses. Only time will give us the answer to that one.
We do have an answer to whether we would stand in a similar position against the Australian dollar this week. We opened on 1.7247 here, before edging ahead to 1.7274 that day. The best rate we had all week was on Thursday, with 1.7404 on the cards. Even though we dropped to 1.7386 by Friday evening, this was still a marked improvement on our opening position.
Notable events in the world of currency
Better news against the Canadian dollar
Here, we managed to improve our position from 1.7292 to 1.7382 this week, so we had some good news to celebrate.
A marginal drop against the Swiss franc
We didn’t manage as well here, but at least the losses were minimal – from 1.2487 to 1.2482 over the week.
Another drop against the Icelandic krona, too
No good news here either, as the pound went from 128.427 to start the week, to 128.394 to end it.
So, we had an interesting mix of results this week – some of which were better than others. We could not expect to do well everywhere – it just wasn’t one of those weeks. However, perhaps there would be more encouraging results to come, and with the General Election almost on top of us, the uncertainty surrounding the markets could well soon come to an end.
It will be interesting to see how that event will affect the British pound, and next week, we will have some initial answers for you. The Election takes place on Thursday 8th June, so Friday’s results will be interesting to look at. Perhaps we can hope for a more settled outlook in the coming weeks. We can only wait and see.