Friday 13th is supposed to be a day of bad luck, but would that turn out to be the case for the British pound this week? We can hope the date is nothing but a myth, and that we’ll get an encouraging end to the week.
An overview of the currency markets for April 9th – April 13th, 2018
The week got underway on 1.4014 for the British pound against the US dollar. It began in promising fashion too, as the first two days saw the pound do well, rising to 1.4178 by Tuesday night. We almost expected a dip following that, and we got one – sending the British currency back to 1.4175. At least it was a mild dip. From then on, the news was far better. With two more encouraging days to close the week, we celebrated a largely successful performance that saw the British pound end on 1.4255 – much better than the 1.4014 we’d opened on.
The pound began trading on 1.1455 against the euro, so could we hope for a similarly encouraging result there as well? It seemed we might do, because Monday’s trading ended on 1.1482. However, things then took a turn for the worse. The pound experienced a two-day fall that took it back to 1.1446 by Wednesday evening. With ground to recover now, we were hoping the final two days would produce a more promising result – and indeed they did. Friday closed out the week on 1.1574, so we did enough to satisfy our need for a good result.
Just as we had done well against the US dollar, so we did well against the Hong Kong version of the dollar as well. We followed the exact same pattern we had seen against the American currency. Opening on 10.998, two strong days took us to 11.129 by Tuesday evening, before we experienced a dip to 11.127 the following day. But we know there were two good days to finish on against the US dollar and that is what we saw here as well. That meant the final rate for this week was 11.190 on a very good Friday 13th.
Our fourth stop takes us over the water to New Zealand, where the pound began on 1.9341 before rising to 1.9372 on Monday night. However, the pattern here was less certain, as we then experienced two less promising days to plunge us into uncertainty in this part of the world. By Wednesday evening, we were on 1.9244 – sending us lower and wiping out the improvements we’d made thus far. While the final two days were better, the finishing rate of 1.9332 was not enough to recoup all the losses we’d experienced to that point.
Would the Australian dollar follow that same pattern? We started trading on 1.8253 here, before rising to 1.8429 on Monday evening. We then had those same two poor days, which meant Wednesday night took the pound back to 1.8292. At least here, we’d got enough headway on Monday to limit the damage of those losses. After ups and downs on the final two days, we ended up slightly better off overall on 1.8288.
Notable events in the world of currency
A slight fall against the Canadian dollar
A fall here sent the pound from 1.7927 to 1.7918 this week.
Better news against the Swiss franc
Here, the pound managed a rise from 1.3515 to 1.3719, which was an altogether better performance.
More good news – this time against the Icelandic krona
We managed some better news in other quarters too. The pound rose from 139.020 to 141.413 this week.
So, we can see there were some encouraging results from the currency markets this week, although they were by no means seen across the board. While it is nice to see good results from all quarters, it does tend to be uncommon. At least Friday 13th wasn’t too problematic for the British pound this week. We hope there are some more encouraging results to contend with next week as well.