It’s that time again to see how the currency markets have fared during the opening two days of trading this week. If you kept an eye on the currency converter last week you would know that the British pound finished off in fairly good form. We managed to up our standing against four out of the five main currencies we look at. Let’s see how we finished last week before we look to see how the first two days this week panned out.
We only had a small increase of 0.0017 against the US dollar, pushing us up to 1.5431 in the process. We managed a slightly better increase of 0.0053 against the Euro though, which was a good end to the week.
Elsewhere we added on 0.016 against the Hong Kong dollar, and a tiny 0.0002 against the New Zealand dollar. In fact the only blot on the landscape was a decrease of just over half a cent – 0.0067 to be precise – against the Aussie dollar.
So how we will move on from this position as the new week begins? Let’s find out what happened right now.
An overview of the currency markets for April 19th – April 20th 2010
Here we go then with a fresh look at how the British pound fared for the first two days of the week against the US dollar. We have a starting position here of 1.5431, so could we improve on this or would we slide back in the opposite direction?
Unfortunately for us we couldn’t have had a worse start to the week if we had tried. The closing rate by the time Monday night rolled around was a disappointing 1.5254. This meant we had lost out on 0.0177 in just one day of trading.
Could we improve things a little on day two though? As it turned out we did just that, but it wasn’t enough to wipe out the previous day’s losses. This left us on 1.5386 at the close of play, which meant we had reduced our two day losses to just under half a cent. This was a good improvement by all standards.
Let’s move on to see if a similar disaster was awaiting us with the Euro on day one of this new week. We were starting from 1.1401 here, and although we did have a dip on Monday it wasn’t on the same scale as we had seen against the US dollar. Instead we had a smaller loss to contend with which pushed us down to 1.1357.
But once again we had an improvement on day two as well. And this time it gave us a better result for the start of the week, with a closing rate of 1.1409 on the cards. This meant we had added on a small amount of 0.0008 over the course of two days.
So we have one good result and one not so good one so far. This does not give us a clear picture of what could happen elsewhere, but since we are moving on to look at the Hong Kong dollar now, we will see which side of the fence this one falls on.
The starting rate here was 11.978, and once again Monday was not proving to be a good day for the British pound. We ended up at a lower rate of 11.842 by Monday evening, but since we have so far done better on Tuesday we were eagerly awaiting the closing result then as well.
And as it turned out we achieved a rate of 11.943 on that day. This still left us down from our starting point on Monday morning, but at least we had recouped some of our losses, leaving us with a smaller deficit of 0.035 instead.
Next we move on to New Zealand. We last left the pound on 2.1631 here, and by Monday night we had again lost ground, leaving us on 2.1538 in this situation. We did again regain some ground the following day – and in this case we managed to creep above the starting rate for the week. This time we closed on 2.1632, leaving us 0.0001 further up than we had been before.
Finally it is time to visit Australia to see how we could do there. The starting rate here was 1.6553 and ironically the pattern of down on Monday and up on Tuesday was completely reversed this time. Instead of dipping down on the first day of the week we went up to 1.6609. But the following day saw a dip to 1.6517, meaning we lost out on 0.0036 throughout these first two days.
Notable events in the world of currency
US dollar rises against Euro
The US dollar made it up from 0.7388 on Sunday evening to 0.7415 just two days later, as the new week got underway.
US dollar also does well against Canadian dollar
It was a good start to the week for the US dollar as it also did well when faced by competition from the Canadian dollar. From a starting exchange rate of 1.0023 it managed to up its position to 1.0132 by Tuesday evening.
Icelandic currency cannot battle against the US dollar
It was a triple whammy for the US dollar during these first two days of the week, as it went from 126.352 to 126.617 against the Icelandic currency.
This week has been overshadowed once again by news of sterling suffering due to the idea of a hung parliament occurring. You can read this news story at the Reuters website to find out more.
So there we have it for another currency report. It seems the pound is hanging on reasonably well given the indecision and uncertainty surrounding this forthcoming election. Hopefully it will rise again once it is all over, but until then we shall be watching closely to see how well – or badly – it actually does.
We’ll have another fresh report for you in just a few days time, once this week is over. We’ll see you then.
Wow this was a good week for the US dollar wasn’t it? I always enjoy these little mini reports at the end of the main report each time, but I particularly like it when they focus on a specific currency. Like this time, we’ve seen how the US dollar has performed against three other currencies we wouldn’t normally look at.
This is good really because it adds more depth. I would prefer it if we did this all the time instead of just picking random currencies. What do other people think? I like the uniformity of it but maybe other people like it when the currencies could be anything. I suppose it adds to the versatility we get from this report!
Anyway keep up the good work!
Yes I like these little bits at the end as well. It’s always nice to get updated with the main report but quite often it is the smaller bits which tell more of a story. We get to hear about other currencies and it gives me a bigger and better picture of what is going on.
I wonder if there is any chance of doubling the number of small items we get like this each time? I wouldn’t want to lose the overall format but since I like these so much it would be nice to see more of them. I shall keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best!
I should also hope for better UK results than we have been seeing of late too…