Welcome back to another look at the situation on the currency converter. Today we’ll look at what happened on the last day of October and how November got underway. Did the pound do well – or badly?
An overview of the currency markets for October 31st – November 4th 2011
The opening rate for the British pound against the US dollar last week was 1.6102, but there were soon changes we didn’t want to see. For instance in just two days the pound dipped back to 1.5935. It did recover over the next two days as it reached a better rate of 1.6028 but it finally ended the week in a worse position, claiming 1.5991 as a result.
So would there be a similar situation against the Euro? Our starting rate was 1.1372 but by the time the same two days had gone by the pound was looking a lot healthier, on 1.1693. It would seem the troubled single currency wasn’t able to conquer the pound to any extent at all. Instead the pound finished on a victorious 1.1611 at the end of the week.
Let’s move on now and see if the Hong Kong dollar was any better. The pound started on 12.506 here, but soon followed the pattern it had against the US dollar. It fell back to 12.386 by Tuesday evening, which didn’t bode well for the rest of the week. Luckily this was the lowest point of the week, but it still finished lower than it had started on Monday, with a closing Friday night rate of 12.423.
So how did the pound do against the New Zealand dollar? Could we expect to get a good result here or not? With a starting rate of 1.9697, could we get good enough improvements to go back over the two dollar mark? We started well by improving to 1.9726 on Monday night, but the next day we did even better. We broke the mark we wanted to hit by ending Tuesday on 2.0057. By the end of the week we’d had a good run and finished on a successful 2.0204.
Finally could we manage a repeat of that pattern against the Australian dollar? Indeed we could, as we started on 1.5090 and had a very successful first two days. We rose to 1.5479 in the process and even though we fell back a little after that, we still did okay by finishing on 1.5419 by Friday evening.
Notable events in the world of currency
More good news against the Canadian dollar
The pound did well here as well, rising from 1.6002 to 1.6301 over the course of the week.
And another great result against the Swiss franc
The pound was doing well last week, as was shown by the other successful result against the Swiss franc. Here we rose from 1.3886 to 1.4185 by the close of the week.
A marginal increase against the Indian rupee
The increase here was small, from 78.527 to 78.528, but the pound still did well against the rupee.
The news was full of the drama in the Eurozone last week, so it was not surprising to find lots of stories about the state of the Euro itself. Even though the signs are not good for the single currency, it managed to get a grip on its losses last week. This was indicated in a story from the FT.com website.
So it would seem as if the pound had a pretty good week last week. The real question though is whether it will continue. For although places like the Eurozone are struggling in ways we hadn’t imagined, Britain is also struggling in some ways. At the moment the pound has done well to make the most of a dramatic week. But we wonder how long this will continue and whether it would perform just as well in a week’s time.