We’re back once again with the latest results from the currency markets for you to evaluate. If you were looking at your currency converter at the beginning of last week you would have seen that the British pound had an up and down time against the five main currencies we always look at. We had two good results and three not so good ones. But the key thing to remember was that because of Easter Monday, we only had one day of trading to focus on for the first half of the week.
Tuesday’s results brought a slight dip against the US dollar as the pound lost 0.0039 in total. It gained a slightly smaller amount against the Euro, while the pound experienced a drop against the Hong Kong dollar of 0.032.
Elsewhere the pound enjoyed a significant rise in a single day of 0.0135 against the New Zealand dollar, while it dropped back by 0.014 against the Australian dollar. Clearly it was an up and down start to the week, but would it end in the same way or would we have very different results to report on?
Let’s find out now how things would progress, by looking at the exchange rates that were in play for the last three days of the week.
An overview of the currency markets for April 7th – April 9th 2010
We’ll start as we always do by focusing in on the US dollar, this time hoping we could reverse the slightly dismal start to the week. The starting rate on Wednesday morning was 1.5181 and by the end of that day we had dipped back slightly to 1.5178. This was only a very small dip though, so it wasn’t too much to worry about.
And as it turned out we did rather better the following day, as we managed to secure a closing exchange rate of 1.5195 at the end of Thursday’s trading. But the best was definitely going to be saved for last, because Friday’s closing figure was an impressive 1.5348. This meant we had succeeded in improving our position against the US dollar, as we had added on a total of 0.0167 since Tuesday evening.
Would we be able to achieve something equally good against the Euro though? Here we were starting from a rate of 1.1332, and by the time the first twenty four hours had gone by we were already doing well. We finished Wednesday’s trading period on 1.1378.
Thursday took us over the 1.14 mark however, which certainly began to bode well for the remainder of the week. So we finished Thursday with a rate of 1.1428 and by Friday evening we had achieved an even better rate to celebrate. We closed out the week 0.0135 better off on 1.1467.
We left the exchange rate against the Hong Kong dollar on 11.789 on Tuesday evening, and we were only marginally lower than this at 11.784 on Wednesday. Thankfully we started heading back in the right direction come Thursday evening, as we managed to up things to a slightly more acceptable 11.792. There was still one day left to go though, so could we continue on the same path?
Indeed we could, and the final exchange rate for the British pound against the Hong Kong dollar for that week turned out to be 11.908. This meant we had added on a total of 0.119 during that three day period.
So far then we have a reasonable array of results. Let’s move on to the New Zealand dollar now though and see whether we could improve on the rate of 2.1753 we were left with by the end of the first day of trading for the week.
If we were hoping for a good day on Wednesday we certainly didn’t get it, because we finished up rather lower on 2.1522 that evening. The following day saw something of a reprieve as we struggled back up to 2.1640, but we weren’t able to hang onto that level for the remainder of the week. Instead we finished Friday evening on 2.1557, losing a total of 0.0196 in the process.
So we just have the Australian dollar to take a look at now, and we were starting from 1.6456 this time around. Once again we dipped back on Wednesday and finished up on 1.6396, but we did recover to 1.6450 the following day. Fortunately we didn’t dip back again the final day, so we finished the week on a rate of 1.6488 in total.
This meant we had managed to increase our standing by a marginal 0.0032 in total, so it wasn’t too bad a finish in the end.
Notable events in the world of currency
New Zealand dollar climbs against Aussie dollar
The New Zealand dollar started on 0.7564 on Wednesday morning, and by Friday evening it had climbed up to 0.7648.
The Euro also suffers at the hands of the New Zealand dollar
The New Zealand dollar was clearly having a good end to the week, as it managed to climb up from 0.5209 on Wednesday morning to finish on 0.5319 at the close of the week.
No luck for the Canadian dollar either
It was a bad time for the Canadian dollar too, as the New Zealand dollar went from 0.6985 to 0.7163 by the close of play on Friday night.
We sometimes see plenty of negative stories about the British pound as far as its exchange rate against the Euro is concerned. But last week was different, as this story on the Reuters website confirmed. The British pound has actually been enjoying some of its best rates against the Euro for many weeks, which has no doubt boosted some people’s confidence in the currency.
It will be interesting to see where things progress from here, as we look ahead to a full five day week of trading next week. Hopefully we will make further progress as we try and get better exchange rates in place for the British pound. We’ll see you then.