Which Currency Would the Pound Have a Great Result Against?

Welcome back to another report on the state of the currency markets. Would the pound have a good week or something more average?

An overview of the currency markets for November 3rd – November 7th 2014

Let’s begin as we usually do with a closer look at the position between the British pound and the US dollar. The opening rate the pound had was 1.5969 and this did improve on day one, taking the pound to 1.5999 as a result. Could we tip over the 1.60 mark? Indeed we could, as Tuesday evening saw the pound rise to 1.6004. However this would turn out to be as good as we could do for the entire week, as it was almost all the way downhill by then. We ended up on 1.5819 by Friday evening, a lower exchange rate than we’d started off with.

Would we see something similar against the euro as well? The opening rate was 1.2751 and we did well once more on Monday, closing on 1.2806 as a result. But once again this would not be the picture for the entire week. Indeed the next three days saw a series of losses taking us back to 1.2720 by Thursday night. On Friday we finally perked up a little, and we actually finished higher than we’d started on 1.2764.

On to the Hong Kong dollar now, where the pound began on 12.384. We had two good days to begin with here, taking the pound to 12.407 by Tuesday evening. Of course there had to be a dip somewhere and here it turned out to be on Wednesday, as we returned to a lower rate of 12.335. After a brief improvement on Thursday we had another drop on Friday, this time taking us to a lower level for the week on a disappointing 12.265.

Sometimes we can see significant rises and falls against the New Zealand dollar but would this be the case this week? We began on 2.0459 and rose to 2.0658 at the end of day one. Unfortunately this would be the sum total of improvements over the entire week. From then on the pound steadily lost ground, closing on 2.0546 by Friday night. At least we stayed above the two dollar mark – things could easily have been much worse.

Finally what of the pound’s performance against the Australian dollar? Here we began the week on 1.8168 and promptly improved to 1.8373 by Monday evening. Was this a fluke? Actually as it turned out it was nothing of the sort. Instead it was the beginning of a very good week, despite the fact we lost ground on a couple of days. We still managed to close out the week on 1.8404, which was the best result we had seen thus far.

Notable events in the world of currency

A slight improvement against the Canadian dollar

Here the pound started on 1.8004 and finished up on 1.8085 last week.

A tiny drop against the Swiss franc

It wasn’t good news everywhere though, as the pound slipped back a little against the Swiss franc. It went from 1.5386 to 1.5368 across the week.

Much better news against the Icelandic krona

Here we found some good news as the pound started on 194.631 and finished on 196.609 last week.

All in all then it wasn’t a bad week at all. The pound has had weeks where it has improved against all the major currencies but these are few and far between on the whole. The good news this time was that it did respectably well in most places, if not in all. Furthermore the losses were not catastrophic in any area, which is another piece of good news.

Of course a lot can change in the course of a week. To that end we shall be watching the markets closely and seeing if we have good or bad news (or a mix) we can bring you next week. We’ll see you then.