Welcome back to another report on how the British pound has been faring lately on the currency markets. Lots of people are fascinated with looking at the changing figures on the currency converter, and since we look at five main currencies each time against the pound, we can see how well it is doing.
We certainly had an interesting start to the week last time around, as we managed to increase our standing against four out of five of the main currencies. There was just one sticking point which turned out to be the Euro. In this case we lost out on a Euro, leaving us on the lower rate of 1.1348 as a result.
Elsewhere we had better news though. The US dollar did not have what it took to survive against the pound over those first two days, as the pound added on a total of 0.0066 in all. It was a similar story against the Hong Kong dollar, with the pound increasing its standing by 0.054.
We even managed to get a good result against the New Zealand dollar, by adding on a total of 0.0072 over the first two days. And finally there was good news against the Australian dollar as well, as we increased our exchange rate by 0.0132.
So what will happen this time? Will the week finish on a good note for the British pound, or will those currencies have other ideas? Let’s find out now.
An overview of the currency markets for April 14th – April 16th 2010
Let’s start as we always do by seeing how the British pound performed against the US dollar. We know we had a good start to the week here, which left us on a rate on Tuesday night of 1.5414. Could we do better than that?
There was an increase in play by Wednesday night, which saw the pound move up to a figure of 1.5447. Not a large increase by any means, but at least we were heading in the right direction.
There was a small drop the following day though, to 1.5437. And this was followed by another one to close out the week on 1.5431. So all in all we had still managed to add on a small amount over those last three days of 0.0017.
How would we fare this time against the Euro though? We finished on 1.1348 last time after losing out on a Euro cent. Could we regain that over the next three days?
Well we started off by going in the wrong direction and landing up on 1.1345. But from then on we did rather well, moving up to a more impressive 1.1397 by Thursday night. And to cap off what would be a better end to the week, we managed to finish on the slightly higher rate of 1.1401 on Friday night.
This meant we had managed to increase the exchange rate between the British pound and the Euro by 0.0053 over those last three days – moving us over the 1.14 Euro rate in the process.
Our next stop is the Hong Kong dollar, where we had an appreciable increase of 0.054 by the end of Tuesday night. Could we do better now and try and add on more by the end of the week?
The starting point was 11.962 and just twenty four hours later we were on 11.988. This was a good start but we then dipped back to 11.981 the following day. It seemed as if the momentum we had started with was now gone, and indeed we finished the week on 11.978. We had still finished up 0.016 higher than we had started on Wednesday morning though, so we had done well nonetheless.
Let’s move on to see how we finished up the week against the New Zealand dollar now. We’d had a good start to the week and we were beginning from 2.1629 now. Just twenty four hours later we were on 2.1657, but then we lost that momentum and crashed back to 2.1624 after the following day.
Finally we ended the week slightly better off by finishing on 2.1631, which meant we had added on just 0.0002 over the course of three days.
Our last stop of the week is the Australian dollar. Here we are starting with a rate of 1.6620 after adding on well over a cent during the first two days of the week. Could we do better here?
Unfortunately it didn’t look good by Wednesday night as we had slipped down to 1.6545. We lost a little more ground the following day by falling to 1.6541, and then we finished off the week with a rate of 1.6553. That meant we had lost over half a cent during those last three days of the week.
Notable events in the world of currency
Aussie dollar gets the better of US dollar
The Aussie dollar didn’t just beat the pound at the end of the week – it also pushed the US dollar down from 1.0782 to 1.0727.
US dollar dips below parity against the Canadian dollar
On Tuesday night it was on 1.0034, but the US dollar went down to 0.9967 the following day before dragging itself back up to reach a rate of 1.0023 to finish the week with.
Very little difference between the New Zealand and Canadian dollars
On Tuesday night the rate was 0.7151 between these two, and we finished the week on 0.7150 after a more marked dip in between.
One of the main tripping points for the British pound at the moment is the forthcoming General Election. As we edge closer to the date for voting, the prospect of having a hung parliament is still a real possibility. And this was the reason why the pound fell in value last week, as you can see by going to http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE63F0VT20100416.
It will be interesting to see how the pound fares once the election is over. Will we do better or worse at that point? We will be watching.
This hung parliament is definitely hanging over the pound at the moment. I can’t wait until it is all resolved and we can get back to some kind of normality again. I don’t suppose it will be that easy but you never know.
Hopefully the pound will start to gain some strength once everything is over and we have some kind of government back in place. Ideally the pound needs to start taking advantage of the Euro, because they are having problems of their own. What with Greece doing so badly it is understandable that we should want to make the most of the situation, but we don’t seem able to do that at the moment. I guess we’ll have to wait and hope just like always.