Welcome back to another week of action from the currency markets. The big question as always is whether the British pound could hold its own against the major currencies on the currency converter. Without further ado, let’s get the answer now.
An overview of the currency markets for August 1st – August 5th 2011
Last week we saw the pound finish on 1.6287 against the US dollar. By the end of day one this had risen to 1.6367. But this would turn out to be a week when the best results were achieved early on, and we didn’t get any better than this at any point. The final exchange rate for the week turned out to be 1.6260, so at least the pound hadn’t lost too much ground.
Let’s move on now to see whether the pound could improve and get a better rate against the Euro instead. Here our starting point was 1.1506, and the first day saw very little change at all. However we then dropped back to 1.1453, so things weren’t looking very positive at all. The lowest point came on the 10th when the pound fell to 1.1308, and then the week closed on 1.1410, losing us some ground in the process.
Next it’s onto the Hong Kong dollar, where we last left things standing at a rate of 12.715. Once again we peaked too soon and reached 12.776 on Monday evening. After that it was downhill all the way, apart from clawing our way back to 12.677 on the last day of the week. This was clearly not going to be a good week for the pound.
The pound was worth 1.9446 against the New Zealand dollar last time, and this soared to 1.9722 after just one day of the new week. We dropped back to 1.9431 on the 10th, before climbing back to finish the week on 1.9653. So here at least we had performed well over the week and finished strongly as a result.
Finally we have the usual head to head with the Australian dollar to look at. We started on 1.5577 and jumped up to 1.5797 on day one. This jumped still further to 1.6023 on day two, so it looked to be a good week here. We did drop back by the time Friday night arrived, but we still finished on 1.5724 overall.
Notable events in the world of currency
A marginal improvement against the Canadian dollar
Here we started on 1.5993 and achieved a week long high point of 1.6198 before finishing on 1.6047 overall.
More good news against the Swiss franc too
The pound performed well here too, climbing from 1.2481 to 1.2533 over the course of the week.
Three out of three, thanks to the strong pound against the rupee
The pound started on 72.880 against the Indian rupee and finished the week on 73.734. So it was good news all round.
The week ended with a report from Reuters on the state of the British pound. It reported that the pound had done well to close out a good week, but there was speculation that it would be difficult to perform just as well in the future too. It remains to be seen whether the pound will start to fall back again in future weeks. Certainly the Reuters report seems to focus on pessimistic views rather than optimistic ones, and there is good reason for this.
So we have seen a good raft of results for this week at least. The big question now is how long the good news will continue for. If the news reports are to be believed it is only a temporary measure. We can expect to see worse reports in the time to come, so it will be interesting to follow the currency in the coming weeks to see if we will be reporting bad news once again.