If you came here hoping for some good news, you should brace yourself. The pound had a rough ride all told last week, as you’re about to find out.
An overview of the currency markets for August 8th – August 12th 2016
The week got underway with the British pound standing at 1.3154 against the US dollar. The first two days did not bode well for the pound however, as it had sunk to 1.2972 by the time Tuesday evening arrived. Wednesday seemed to indicate there could be a chance to turn the corner, as the pound rose to 1.3074 by the end of the day. But there was worse news to come on Thursday, which was when the pound finished trading on 1.2962. Was there more bad news to come on Friday, or could we at least pull back some of the losses so far? Fortunately, it was good news, if only very moderate in nature. The pound closed out the week on 1.2966.
Onto the euro now, where the pound started off with a rate of 1.1791 this week. However, once again the first two days did not go well at all. By Tuesday evening when the markets closed, the pound was left wanting on 1.1709. This already gave us quite a loss, but we had more to come yet. In fact, we should probably break the bad news now and reveal there was not a single improvement at all this week, on a day-to-day basis. Instead it was a week of constant falls, resulting in a week-ending rate of 1.1621.
Could we do any better than that against the Hong Kong dollar? It turned out the pattern here was very much like the one seen against the US dollar. The pound began on 10.201 before having two poor days that took it back to 10.064. We then perked back up to 10.141 on Wednesday, before dipping again the next day, this time to 10.054. We had a slight improvement to finish the week, but slight it was, as the pound finished on a slightly-improved rate of 10.058.
Onto the New Zealand version of the dollar now, where the pound started on 1.8244. We did improve on the first day, rising to 1.8301, which did give us some hope for the future. However, we then had to endure three days of poor results. You would be forgiven for feeling dejected as a rate of 1.7887 came in on Thursday night – surely too much to recover in the single day that was left to us. And indeed it was, although we did improve a bit to take us back to 1.8009.
Finally, we should see whether there was a chance to improve against the Australian dollar. We began trading on 1.7176 and then had four of the worst days we had seen against this currency for quite a while. This meant we had slid back to 1.6806 by the time Thursday’s trading was over and done with. We managed to claw back a little on Friday, but we still only finished on 1.6891.
Notable events in the world of currency
Another drop, this time against the Canadian dollar
Yes, here too the pound couldn’t do anything to stop the rot. Instead, it dropped back to 1.6825 from a starting point of 1.7131.
More of the same against the Swiss franc
At least the drop here was lower than we had seen elsewhere this week. In fact, we managed to keep things in check so we started on 1.2795 and slid to 1.2653 all told.
Steady losses racking up against the Icelandic krona as well
Here, the pound began on 158.335 and ended up falling steadily to close on a disappointing 152.819 – quite a drop.
So it really is a case of scrabbling to find some good news this week. Will things change? It doesn’t look as though we can expect any growth in the foreseeable future, so we must just hang on to try and hope for better in the long term.