On New Year’s Eve 2016, the British pound was worth 1.2311 against the American currency. We stood at the end of a dramatic year in which plenty of national and international events had seen an impact on the pound’s worth. Now, we stood on the precipice of 2017, a year in which the US would soon receive a new President, and in which Article 50 would soon be triggered. This would begin the process of the UK’s exit from the EU.
The pound dipped in value throughout the early part of the first week of January, reaching a low of 1.2280 in doing so. It recovered to close the week on 1.2363 though. With that said, the second week would not be as encouraging. This was when the pound struggled to maintain its footing against the dollar, despite it achieving a couple of good results in the middle part of the week. In the end, it finished on 1.2177 on Friday 13th.
The third week was a little better, thankfully. That week still saw a mixed bag of results, where you didn’t really know what would be achieved from one moment to the next. Yet from an opening rate of 1.2177, the British pound managed to edge ahead to close the week in better shape, this time on 1.2277.
Now we come to the final whole week of January – the most recent week that has occurred. We still have a couple of odd days left to trade in, and no one can be certain whether the pound will benefit during that time, or whether it will struggle to maintain the better performance it put in just recently. But over the course of that final whole week, the pound went from 1.2277 to 1.2540. That’s quite a rise – over two and a half cents, to be precise. That means there is a good chance this improvement could last, or at least that we wouldn’t lose all our gains over the final two days January has left to run.
We’re hoping to start February in better shape than we began the New Year, and so far, it looks promising that this might happen. We’ll keep you posted, because you never know what might happen in the space of a couple of days. Even in the better weeks of this month, we’ve seen ups and downs. The British pound simply managed to come out on top in most of them.
It does give us hope that perhaps the near future might see a stronger pound on the currency markets. However, as we all know, anything can and will happen on any given day.