So here we are at the end of another month, and it’s certainly been an interesting one. August has not ended on a positive note for the British pound, as you will see if you take a look at the last few reports we have posted.
But will it be able to pull out all the stops and at least do something reasonably good for the last couple of days of trading left in August? Let find out the answer right now.
An overview of the currency markets for August 30th – August 31st 2010
Here we go then with a first look at the last dregs of the month against the US dollar. 1.5492 was the figure we finished up with on Wednesday night, so could we do better with the two remaining days we had left to work with?
Things looked more promising on Thursday as the pound finished the day on 1.5554. But if we started to get a little more optimistic we were soon left feeling disappointed again. That’s because Friday blew what little we had gained on Thursday out of the water, leaving us on a sorry 1.5373 to end the week and the month.
So could we perform better against the Euro? We were left on a rate of 1.2186 on the currency converter on Wednesday evening, and by Thursday this had changed to 1.2247. But once again things then went downhill and we ended up on 1.2124 to finish the week. This was clearly not going to be easy for the pound.
Next up we have the Hong Kong dollar to focus on, where we last left the exchange rate on 12.052. Once again though the pattern was very similar; we improved to 12.101 on Thursday and then lost the plot on Friday. This meant we finished on 11.960 on this occasion.
Moving on now to the New Zealand dollar, will we see a similar pattern occurring here? The starting point was 2.1959 so we were half expecting a rise followed by a fall. But that wasn’t what happened this time.
Instead we reversed the trend with a fall to 2.1926 on Thursday and a rise back up to 2.2050 to close the week on a stronger note. At least we were doing better in some respects. Now the only question is whether we could repeat the feat against the Australian dollar as well.
Here we were starting with an exchange rate of 1.7453, but the first piece of news was not good. We fell back to 1.7343 on Thursday and although we arrested the rate of losses we still finished Friday night on 1.7342.
As you can see it wasn’t the best week for the pound.
Notable events in the world of currency
Kiwi dollar slumps against Aussie dollar
These two are always worth checking on and this time the Kiwi fell from 0.7947 to 0.7864 over the space of two days.
Another drop for the New Zealand dollar against the US dollar
Here too the news wasn’t good for the Kiwi dollar, so at least it was in the same boat as the British pound. It fell from 0.7054 to 0.6972 against the US dollar in just forty eight hours.
Another fall against the Euro
The Kiwi dollar went from 0.5549 to 0.5498 over the course of two days so there was very little to celebrate against the Euro either.
One news story that stuck out at the end of last week concerned the yen and its good performance of late. You can read more about it at FT.com.
So it has not been the best month at all for the British pound, and judging by comments made by experts in recent days there is every reason to suspect we are only at the beginning of a more prolonged downward slide. In this case it is at least heartening to see the slide has been a slow one thus far. Whether or not it gathers pace is anyone’s guess now.
We shall be back with our first report for September very soon. Until then, keep a close eye on the pound. It could be worse than you think.