Welcome back to the latest currency report which shows how the British pound is doing against various other major world currencies. If you have reason to use a currency converter regularly you may already know how some of the results have turned out over the last few days of last week’s trading. However if you don’t know what has been going on, let us reveal a few choice answers for you.
The first two days of the week were interesting as they provided two good results for the pound, increasing its value against the US dollar and the Hong Kong dollar, and three not so good ones. The not so good ones saw losses for the other three currencies. The pound dropped by 0.0154 against the New Zealand dollar and by a similar amount against the Australian dollar. It also lost a smaller amount against the Euro of 0.0024.
The gains were minimal when they did appear. We saw an increase of just 0.0032 against the US dollar over those first two days of the week, and 0.018 against the Euro over the same two days.
So how would the remaining three days of the week progress for the pound? Were these early signs going to be played out over the remaining few days? Or was there another story waiting to be told?
Let’s find out what happened right now.
An overview of the currency markets for February 24th – February 26th 2010
So let’s start out by focusing on how the British pound fared against the US dollar for the remainder of the week. Our starting exchange rate on Wednesday morning was 1.5424, so the aim was to try and push that up as the week went on. And we did at least get the best start possible with a small increase to 1.5438.
But if we were thinking this was going to develop into a great end to the week we were wrong. The following day saw us lose out on over a cent against the US dollar, leaving us on a much weaker position of 1.5312. There was still one day to go to close out the week though, and if we could make the most of that and get another good exchange rate to end on a better note, we might save the week.
Unfortunately what we actually got was a rate of 1.5201, which was far worse than the rate even the day before had made us think we might finish on. All in all we had lost out on well over two cents in the remaining half of the week.
So let’s move on swiftly now and see whether we can achieve anything better than that now with the Euro. Here we were starting with a rate of 1.1361, having already lost 0.0024 so far during the week. Could we better that now?
Wednesday saw an increase to 1.1396, which wasn’t very much but it was better than nothing. However we saw an increase against the dollar at this stage so maybe it was a good sign.
But we saw the same pattern on Thursday too, with a drop to 1.1352. And Friday’s figure was no more encouraging because the closing rate was 1.1201. So we had lost a total of 0.016 over the three days.
Our next stop is Hong Kong, where our starting exchange rate this time is 11.972. This was the second good result we had in the first couple of days of the week, but we saw with the US dollar that a good start does not necessarily equate to a good finish.
Once again we did have a good result on Wednesday as the pound pushed up to 11.986. But things didn’t stay that way as the following day produced a lower rate of 11.888. And once again we could have predicted what was to come on Friday, as we finished in a poor position on 11.799.
We left the pound claiming 2.2021 against the New Zealand dollar on Tuesday evening, and by Wednesday the figure had changed to 2.2322. But even though this was an impressive jump up, the results from those other countries have shown us it doesn’t do well to be too optimistic. And indeed the following day saw a rate of 2.2180 in force, which duly dropped even lower to 2.1898 on Friday night. That meant we had lost 0.0123 in three days.
Our final stop is with the Aussie dollar, where we last left the pound on 1.7121. By Wednesday night that had changed to 1.7311, and then we lost some of that increase again the following day, dropping to 1.7239 in the process. And by Friday night we were on 1.7071.
So it wasn’t a good finish to the week at all.
Notable events in the world of currency
New Zealand dollar has slight increase against Aussie dollar
It was only slight but it went up from 0.7755 at the close of trading on Wednesday to 0.7795 on Friday night.
An up and down time for the US dollar
The dollar was worth 0.7381 against the Euro on Wednesday evening, but despite an increase the following day it was back down to 0.7369 on Friday night.
Canada dips against the Euro
Tuesday’s closing results saw the Canadian dollar worth 0.7056 against the Euro. But by Friday that was down to 0.6966.
The main story of late has been the struggles of the pound to remain strong against other competition from the main currencies. But this news story from the Reuters website last Friday shows just how deep this battle is running at the moment.
So there we are – we’ve come to the end of another week here in the UK, as the pound tries to maintain a degree of strength against the other world currencies. The next report should be an interesting one as the situation develops and we see whether it is a minor blip – or something else entirely.