Welcome to our latest look at the performance of the British pound on the currency markets. Without further delay, let’s see how it did last week.
An overview of the currency markets for April 1st – April 5th, 2019
As the new month began, we had a rate of 1.3035 to begin with for the pound versus the American dollar. From there, we saw some improvement on day one as the pound rose to 1.3089 at the close of play. The next two days saw further improvements, and by Wednesday evening we had risen to 1.3159. Could we maintain that until the end of the day, we wondered? The answer soon became clear as the final two days of the week led to a drop to 1.3037… just above the opening rate for the week.
We then saw similar ups and downs against the euro. Opening here on 1.1606, the pound had a good day to start with, rising to 1.1674 in the process. The next day saw further progress, taking the pound to 1.1719. But could we maintain that good positioning for even longer? Dipping to 1.1716 the following day allowed doubts to pop up, and those were confirmed as the pound slipped to a closing rate of 1.1623 by Friday night.
So far, the week had not been great, with one mildly good result and one disappointment. So, which way would things go with the Hong Kong dollar? We started on 10.232 and again the first few days went the way of the pound. With a positive result on Monday, taking us to 10.275, we built on that and improved to 10.329 by Wednesday night. But once again, it was the latter part of the week that let us down. We ended up with a rate of 10.234 on Friday, mirroring the slight bump we’d seen against the US dollar.
We never know how things might progress against the New Zealand dollar, so here we are about to get our answer. Opening the week on 1.9118, we again saw a week of two halves. However, we could not have predicted a rise to 1.9412 by Wednesday evening. Even though the remainder of the week was a disappointment, the losses suffered over the final two days were far from enough to wipe out the gains made in that same period. That meant we closed on a reassuring rate of 1.9361.
The final main currency to consider is the Australian dollar, where the pound started on 1.8330 last week. This rose to 1.8412 by Monday evening, and improved further to 1.8573 the following day. However, that would be the best rate of the entire week, and there would be falls following on from that. Friday closed with the pound sitting on 1.8345, which was still marginally higher than the opening rate had been on Monday.
Notable events in the world of currency
A small rise against the Canadian dollar
The pound ended up with a small boost here, taking it from 1.7404 to 1.7455 over the course of the week.
More of the same against the Swiss franc
We got something very similar in this part of Europe, as the pound rose from 1.2968 to 1.3040 this time around.
But there was a steady fall in store against the Icelandic krona
There was little to celebrate here, as the graph for this pairing showed a fall over the entire week for the pound. Moving from 160.013 to 155.126 came as quite a shock.
So, this was far from the ideal week for the pound. However, there were a few exceptions where improvements were made. With plenty of reason to hope the British pound would achieve better results next week, perhaps we should look ahead and hope the pound would manage to do just that. We shall be watching closely to determine how the pound will fare from here. Will we have better news next week or something closer to disappointment? We’ll let you know when we have the results of the next few days.