A dramatic week can often happen on the currency markets. But would this week be dramatic in a good or a bad way?
An overview of the currency markets for September 14th – September 18th 2015
The week began with the British pound standing at 1.5422 against the US dollar. This did not change to our benefit though, as the first two days saw slight decreases in the value of the pound. By Tuesday evening it was down to 1.5409. The remainder of the week panned out much better though, and indeed there were some reasonable improvements in the exchange rate. By Friday evening the pound had risen to an impressive 1.5646.
The question now was whether this was the beginning of a good week for the British pound. Could it do just as well against the euro as well, for example? In this corner of the world the pound began with an exchange rate of 1.3687. Once again the first two days didn’t go our way though, resulting in a closing rate of 1.3612 on Tuesday evening. Wednesday saw an improvement to 1.3761 but the final two days of the week didn’t go the way we might have wanted them to. Instead the pound slipped back to finish the week on 1.3702 against the euro. At least the one good day meant we still finished in a better position to the one we’d started in.
Next on our list of stops is Hong Kong, where their dollar went head-to-head with the British pound as well. Here we began on 11.952 and the same pattern we’d seen against the US dollar started to make itself known. This meant we had two days of bad results to start with, taking us to 11.942 by Tuesday night. Fortunately the three good days we’d had against the Hong Kong dollar’s US counterpart were in evidence here as well. By the time Friday evening rolled around we had a closing rate that was much better, taking us to 12.126.
So how could we perform against the New Zealand dollar? Well, the pound started the week on 2.4519 and had those two poor days to take it through until Tuesday night. By this time it was settled on 2.4335. Wednesday and Thursday were better though, and took the pound back up to 2.4457 again. Unfortunately the pound couldn’t regain the good value it had started from. To that end, it finished off Friday night on 2.4257 instead.
Finally we have to see whether a similar pattern would play out against the Australian dollar too. Here we began on 2.1838 and then dropped down over the first three days of the week. This meant we were far lower than we would have liked by Wednesday night, stalling on 2.1574 in the process. We managed to bump this up to 2.1651 the following day, but it didn’t stop us from dropping back to 2.1525 by Friday night.
Notable events in the world of currency
A further loss against the Canadian dollar
This week the pound sank from 2.0455 to 2.0383 against the Canadian dollar too.
Another loss against the Swiss franc
There was little good news against the European currencies this week for the pound. Here the currency began the week on 1.5098 and ended it on 1.4953.
Only a minor change against the Icelandic krona
This was still chalked up as a loss, but at least it was a smaller one. The pound went from 196.553 to 196.532 here.
So all in all it was an interesting week. Perhaps next time around there will be more encouraging results all told, but for the time being it was enough to note that we had achieved some reasonable results here and there. We didn’t do well against the European currencies, instead performing better against some of the dollar currencies around the world (but not all of them).
We will be back with more exchange rates for you next time, and hopefully a larger number of better ones as well.