This time, we see how the British pound would fare as we said goodbye to November and headed into the final month of 2016. Would this be a week to remember?
An overview of the currency markets for November 28th – December 2nd 2016
Monday would not give us the start we wanted against the US dollar, as the pound started trading on 1.2434, only to fall to 1.2412 by the end of the day. However, this turned out to be the prelude to better times throughout the next three days. The pound steadily rose over Tuesday and Wednesday, before jumping ahead to an impressive 1.2636 on Thursday night. It couldn’t quite maintain that, but even though it fell to 1.2623 on Friday, this was still far better than the opening rate had given us to start with.
Moving on to the euro now, we saw a similar drop here to start the week. We began on 1.1739 before falling to close Monday night on 1.1722. We didn’t have three good days in a row next as we had against the US dollar, but we did manage to improve overall to reach 1.1890 by Thursday evening. And once again, the drop on Friday (this time to 1.1861) was not enough to take us below our original weekly starting rate.
So, could we make it three good results with a good performance against the Hong Kong dollar as well? We began on 9.6444 before enjoying three strong days spread through the middle of the week. We had to drop to 9.6265 first by Monday night, though. However, by the time Thursday night arrived, we had improved to 9.8007. We did dip back to 9.7901 but by the time that happened, we had already done well over the whole week.
Our fourth stop is with the New Zealand dollar. We opened trading here on 1.7656 before dropping to 1.7573 on Monday (by now, a familiar pattern). Here though, we ended up rising and falling with each passing day, so the question was whether we would end up doing fine over the whole week. The biggest jump (and indication that things would go our way) happened between Wednesday and Thursday, when the pound leaped from 1.7490 to 1.7845. A drop to 1.7781 on Friday wasn’t enough to ruin the good performance we’d had here over the week.
Finally, it’s time to see whether we could do well against the Australian dollar too. We opened on 1.6705 before falling to 1.6639, but we then had three good days that took us to 1.7096 by Thursday evening. Even though we couldn’t prevent a last-minute fall to 1.7001, we still managed to do well for the entire week.
Notable events in the world of currency
A slight improvement against the Canadian dollar
Here we had some good news as the pound edged up from 1.6775 to reach 1.6793 this week.
More good news for the pound versus the Swiss franc
Here too we had encouraging news. The pound began trading on 1.2603 before rising to finish the week on 1.2752.
Better news against the Icelandic krona as well
There was better news here too, as we proved the krona was no match for the British pound. We rose from 140.415 to 141.597 by the close of play on Friday.
So, this was an encouraging week for the British pound, with a good raft of results that took us from the final days of November into the first two days of December. Whether the good results bode well for the remainder of the month (and indeed the year) remains to be seen. We will go into the holiday period soon with a couple of shorter weeks, but until then we have some more regular trading to complete. Perhaps we are heading for a more encouraging picture as 2016 comes to an end, but even if this is true, there is no way of telling how good (or bad) 2017 could be. We will be watching and waiting to find out.