We already know from the introduction to this report that the British pound would not do well this week. However, would it be worse than we expected?
An overview of the currency markets for October 16th – October 20th, 2017
Here we go, beginning with the position of the British pound against the US dollar. We began last week on 1.3272 and improved this to 1.3298 on Monday. However, things took a turn for the worse from there, and this pattern continued over the course of two days. By Wednesday evening, the pound had dropped to 1.3159. We did however get two better days to finish the week on. This meant the British pound perked up to 1.3186 by Friday night. This was not as good as the opening rate had been, though.
Moving on to the euro now, let’s see if the pound could do better there. We opened on 1.1238 against the single currency, before rising to 1.1267 on Monday night. We saw how the pound dropped over the next two days against the American dollar though. Would it do the same here? As it turned out, the pound dropped over the next three days, falling to 1.1134 by Thursday night. Although it perked up to 1.1157 by Friday evening, this didn’t recoup the losses from earlier in the week.
Next up, it’s the turn of the Hong Kong dollar to go up against the pound. The British currency began trading on 10.363 in this part of the world, before rising to 10.385 on Monday night, as it had across other currencies as well. It then had two poor days that took it down to 10.274 by Wednesday evening. The pattern here was following the one seen against the US dollar earlier in our report. And yes, we then finished with two better days, taking the pound to 10.289 to close out the week.
Our fourth stop is with the New Zealand dollar. Here, we began trading on 1.8589 before falling over the first two days. That’s different to what we’ve seen elsewhere, and it resulted in the pound stalling on 1.8368 on Tuesday night. However, the remainder of the week was in better shape. We ended up progressing to 1.8840 by Friday evening – an exchange rate that was probably unthinkable earlier in the week. This was by far our best result so far.
Could we replicate that result against the Australian dollar as well? We began trading on 1.6947, but we had far from the same result here. Not only did we fall over days one and two, we continued to fall through until Thursday evening. With four poor days to contend with, the pound ended up on 1.6737 by that night. So, while we did rise on Friday, it only took us to 1.6798, giving us yet another poor result this week.
Notable events in the world of currency
More of the same with another drop against the Canadian dollar
Here too the news wasn’t good. The pound fell from its opening rate of 1.6589 and dipped to 1.6474 by the close of the week.
Choppy times against the Swiss franc as well
We had ups and downs all week here. It boiled down to an opening rate on Monday of 1.2961 reaching a closing rate of 1.2939 on Friday night.
Another fall against the Icelandic krona
There was more of the same here, as the British pound started out trading on 139.021 this week, before falling to 138.903.
So, this was far from the best week the British pound has put in of late. In fact, it is uncertain how things will progress from here. The stalled Brexit negotiations, which have hardly achieved anything yet, are clearly affecting things, but there are many other elements at play too.
We cannot tell what will happen next, but rest assured we shall be watching closely and reporting back next week to determine what lies ahead for the British pound. Will we have better news to bring you next time around?