Welcome back to another fact packed currency report. This time we shall be looking at the last three days of a week that ended with Friday the 13th – so would it prove to be lucky or unlucky for the British pound?
The first half of the week was definitely split in two, with the pound slipping against the US dollar, the Euro and the Hong Kong dollar on the currency converter. Elsewhere we had better news as the pound did well against the New Zealand and Australian dollars.
But how would the week end as a whole? Could we get better results right across the board? Let’s find out right now.
An overview of the currency markets for August 11th – August 13th 2010
Our opening rate against the US dollar this time around was 1.5724. Could we do better than that and start moving towards the 1.60 mark to close out the week?
There was very little movement at all during Wednesday, as the pound barely changed to 1.5723. There was a bigger change on Thursday though, but it wasn’t one that went in our favour. Instead we finished the day on 1.5586, leaving us doubting whether we could end the week on a good note.
Indeed we didn’t – instead we had a closing rate of 1.5585.
So let’s see whether we could do better against the Euro. Our opening rate on Wednesday morning was 1.1973, and we started well by increasing that to 1.2080 by the end of the day. There was better news on Thursday as well, as it ended on1.2186. We couldn’t quite make it three increases in a row but the closing rate for the weekend was 1.2177, so it wasn’t a bad result.
Let’s move on to Hong Kong now, to see whether we could win over their dollar. The opening rate was 12.207 and we perked up a little throughout Wednesday to end on 12.210.
Unfortunately this performance did not last out the week. Thursday saw a closing figure of 12.106 and by Friday night we were on 12.112, which was only slightly better. So it wasn’t a good week here.
Perhaps we would get another good result against the New Zealand dollar though. If we could improve from the starting rate of 2.1896 it would certainly be a result to celebrate.
We didn’t start well because Wednesday closed on 2.1833, but Thursday brightened things up considerably with a closing rate of 2.2008. We lost some ground to finish the week on 2.1980 but at least we were still up on where we had started from.
Finally we have the Australian dollar to look at. The opening rate for the British pound here was 1.7322, and we had two good days which saw figures of 1.7396 and 1.7451 on the cards. We then dropped the ball to finish on 1.7389.
Notable events in the world of currency
British pound falls against Canadian dollar
There was a slight drop here from 1.6277 to 1.6231 as the week came to a close.
US dollar does better against the Canadian dollar
There was better news here as the US dollar climbed from 1.0351 to 1.0414 to end the week on a good note.
Swiss franc wins against the Canadian dollar too
From 0.9784 on Tuesday night to 0.9882 on Friday night, the Swiss franc had a winning week.
The results the British pound has had against the US dollar recently were the theme for a report from Reuters last week. Lots of news stories pointed to the fact that the pound has not had a good end to the week.
Hopefully as we move forward, this will turn out to be nothing more than a blip. However it remains to be seen how strongly the pound can perform through future weeks. It has been reasonably good of late although the good results have always been mixed in with some very patchy ones.
We can but hope that the long term picture is a good one, and it is only the short term that looks a little uncertain. Whatever the news may be, we shall be back in a few days to report the next step ahead.
It’s always interesting to look back over a few older reports to see the patterns that were starting to emerge. I remember when I first read this particular report I thought the pound was just having a bit of a bad week. Now it seems as if it is going to be worse than that, with some significant losses on the cards for the currency.
I just wonder how bad it will get during the second half of the year. I know the reports are not good but I suppose things will have to get worse in some respects as we try and tackle the deficit. It can’t always be good all the time can it? I’m just not sure how we can hope to improve at the moment.