Some weeks are a joy to review when it comes to assessing the performance of the British pound. This would be one of them.
An overview of the currency markets for April 25th – April 29th 2016
How would the British pound perform this week? It began trading on 1.4377 against the US dollar and had an encouraging start, rising to 1.4507 on Monday evening. That was quite a jump, but did it mean it wouldn’t be able to sustain the improvement throughout the remaining four days of trading still to come? That was a worry, but as it turned out, we had nothing of the sort to worry about at all. The remaining four days were each very good indeed for the British pound. By the time Friday arrived, we had sailed through the entire week, ending on a great rate of 1.4614 as a result.
So, could we do the same against the euro as well? Things did look rather good to begin with, as the British pound began trading on 1.2765 and rose to 1.2879 this week. Would we be able to repeat this trick for the remaining four days, though? Well, things started off well, taking the pound to 1.2907 by Wednesday evening. However, the final two days of the week did not go in our favour. Instead, we finished on Friday night with a rate of 1.2816 – yet this was still better than Monday’s opener had been, so it was all good so far.
Let’s move on to Hong Kong now, to see if we could add to our one good dollar performance thus far. As it turned out, we could – we began on 11.153 before rising to 11.253 by Monday night. Additionally, we improved on that rate every day from then on – leaving us on 11.338 at the end of Friday’s period of trading. Clearly, the pound was having an excellent week thus far, putting in strong performances here, there and everywhere.
We know things can change markedly by the time we reach the shores of New Zealand though, so could this be where things start to go awry? Well, we were encouraged by rising from the opening rate of 2.0889 to 2.1121 on day one. This gave us enough of a cushion to weather any future storms that might turn up later in the week. Two more days of good trading left us on 2.1302 by Wednesday evening, before we dipped sharply to 2.0924 on Thursday night. Fortunately, we improved to 2.0963 on Friday. Although this was lower than we had hoped for, it was still very good given the peaks and troughs seen this week in this part of the world.
Fortunately, we performed rather better in Australia. Here the pattern was very clear – the first three days were all about the British pound. We began on 1.8599 before rising sharply to 1.9212 on Wednesday evening. Even though we dipped slightly on Thursday, we did manage to perk up again to close out the week on 1.9157.
Notable events in the world of currency
A marginal improvement against the Canadian dollar
Here we would see an improvement, but it was of the smallest kind. The pound went from 1.8308 to 1.8309 over the course of the week.
More good news against the Swiss franc
Here we had some good news too, as the pound rose from 1.4030 to 1.4077 this week.
Finally, a drop, against the Icelandic krona
We had to have bad news somewhere, but at least it wasn’t too bad. The pound dropped from 179.552 to 179.378 this week.
So all in all, this was a very good week for the British pound. We can forgive the slight slide against the Icelandic krona, especially since its performance against all the major currencies were very good indeed. It was something of a surprise to report on such encouraging results, but of course, the question now is whether it will last. Will we have such good results next week as well?