Another short week this week, as Easter Monday ate into our usual five days of trading to reduce it to just four. How would the British pound fare during those four days?
An overview of the currency markets for April 2nd – April 6th, 2018
As the Easter break came to an end, the currency markets returned to normal on Tuesday morning. The pound began with a rate of 1.4082 against the US dollar, but this soon dipped to 1.4062 by the end of the day. At least the drop was a small one. However, a larger dip came the following day, taking the British currency to 1.4018. A mild recovery was then seen on Thursday, as we headed north again to 1.4028. Unfortunately, the worst rate yet was reserved for Friday. We finished on 1.4014 by the time trading was over this time around.
So, would we end up performing just as badly against the euro after Easter? We began the shorter week on 1.1429 here, and things did not go our way over the first two days. This meant that by Wednesday night, the pound had stalled on a disappointing 1.1419. The only good news was the minimal nature of those losses. We had better news yet to come, thankfully. The final two days went our way instead of the way of the euro. That meant Friday night saw a closing rate of 1.1455 – and that was better than we’d begun with on Tuesday morning, so we could count this as a victory.
Moving on, we suspected we may see a similarly disappointing picture against the Hong Kong dollar as we had seen against the American currency. We were correct too – from an opening rate of 11.052, we fell over the first two days to reach a low point of 11.002 on Wednesday night. Were we about to dip below the 11.000 mark? It certainly seemed that way. While we managed to avoid it on Thursday, rising slightly to 11.011, we succumbed on the last day of the week, falling to 10.998 against the Hong Kong currency to finish the week.
We opened on 1.9542 against the New Zealand currency, but here too we were set a challenge we didn’t seem able to meet. We ended up slogging through three days of poor results, which meant that by the time Thursday night rolled around, we had dipped to 1.9221. That’s quite a drop from the beginning of the shortened week. While we did manage to recoup some of our losses on Friday, we still finished on 1.9341 – lower than we’d hoped.
Finally, we should see if the pound managed to do any better against the Australian dollar. We opened trading on 1.8328 here, but again, the first three days out of four were nothing but a disappointment. We finished on 1.8239 on Thursday evening, so at least the losses were not as steep as they were against the Kiwi dollar. We recovered here too, but again only marginally. Friday’s closing rate was confirmed as 1.8253.
Notable events in the world of currency
The falls continued with a loss against the Canadian dollar
More disappointment here, as the pound fell from 1.8167 to reach a new low of 1.7927 by the end of the four-day Easter week.
A better outcome against the Swiss franc
The news here was better than we’d seen elsewhere, thankfully. From a starting rate of 1.3463 on Tuesday morning, we finished up reaching 1.3515 by the end of the week against the Swiss franc.
Another marginal improvement, this time against the Icelandic krona
Sometimes, you need to dig deep to find some good results. We did here and found an improvement from 138.883 to 139.020 this time around.
This was far from the best week we’ve seen from the British pound. However, at least we found a few slivers of good news here and there. Hopefully, this is something we can build on, but as always, we must wait until next week to find out more.