Welcome back for another tour of the currency markets. Let’s get straight to the results for this week, shall we?
An overview of the currency markets for January 19th – January 23rd 2015
Here we are then with another fresh week on the currency markets. The British pound began on 1.5173 against the US dollar but this immediately dropped to 1.5142. Not the best of starts but the pound did recover the following day, at least crawling back to 1.5161. It soon became clear though that this week would be filled with ups and downs in succession. Since we began with a fall in value for the British pound it was only likely we would end the week in the same way. The bad news was we dropped quite considerably on the final day of the week, as the pound closed things out on 1.4984.
Would we fall as badly against the euro as well? Here we began on 1.3094 before falling back to 1.3048 by the end of Monday’s trading. We then went through a few ups and downs here as well, which left us wondering where we would end up on Friday. The good news was we managed to save the best until the final day, when we went from Thursday’s closing rate of 1.3082 to a much better 1.3381.
Over to Hong Kong now, where the pound began on 11.762 before falling back to close the day on 11.738. The pattern here was much the same as we saw against the US dollar, particularly by the end of the week. This meant that while we had some ups and downs prior to Friday’s bout of trading, we didn’t finish well when confronted with the chance to rectify things. Indeed, we ended up falling back to 11.616 to close out the week from a rate of 11.783 on Friday morning.
Our fourth stop is New Zealand, and as we know the Kiwi and Aussie dollars can sometimes provide some more unusual exchange rates to get to grips with as opposed to what occurs in other countries. In New Zealand the pound started things off with a rate of 1.9472, and although it fell in value on day one it soon recovered to close on 1.9659 on Tuesday. From that point on it became clear this was going to be a strong performance from the British pound – so much so it ended up with a rate of 2.0115 by Friday night.
Could we do something similar against the Australian dollar? Well, we started on 1.8479 and while the week had a few more ups and downs we did manage to get on top of things eventually. Indeed we actually managed to finish in style here too, rising to an impressive 1.8960 by Friday night. All in all it had been a strong week for the pound.
Notable events in the world of currency
Another good rise against the Canadian dollar
The pound went from a starting rate of 1.8261 to 1.8649 against the Canadian dollar this week.
A rocky ride against the Swiss franc
Here the pound began the week on 1.3261 before dropping to 1.3007 by Thursday. It then recovered to 1.3135 by the time Friday night arrived.
Another good move against the Icelandic krona
Here too the pound did rather well, beginning the week on 199.388 before rising to finish things off on 203.224 by Friday night.
So we can see it was quite a thrilling week in terms of big movements on the currency markets. The British pound came out of it quite well in the end and this made for a good outcome all in all. Perhaps next week won’t be quite as exciting, particularly since this week was so good in some quarters. However we shan’t know until the results are in and the outcome is known. The uncertainty surrounding the Swiss franc is still there too, so we shall be watching closely to see what happens next.