Welcome back to another look at the current state of affairs on the currency markets. How has the British pound performed on the currency converter in recent days? Let’s find out now what situation it is in.
An overview of the currency markets for December 5th – December 9th 2011
The last time we caught up with the British pound and its stand against the US dollar, it was worth 1.5706. Would this rise or fall? The early answer was that it fell to 1.5643 after a single day of trading. It rose to 1.5724 later on in the week before finally finishing Friday on 1.5687 – only a slight difference in the end.
Next up we should see whether the Euro has been able to put a dent in the pound’s performance over the past week. Things are still looking dire for the single currency so hopefully the pound could go further than its starting rate of 1.1625. Indeed it did over the course of the week, gradually rising day by day with the exception of a slight slip midweek. It finished off on 1.1721 on Friday night.
But where would the pound stand against the Hong Kong dollar? Here we were starting with a rate of 12.201 which immediately dropped to 12.156 on Monday night. So were we in for a bad week here? As it happened we did manage to regain ground and were in a strong position on Thursday with 12.225 on the cards. This fell to 12.203 on Friday but at least we were still slightly better off than we had been on Monday.
Next it is the turn of the New Zealand dollar. The pound had garnered an exchange rate of 2.0106 at the end of the previous week, so could we improve on it now? To start with it looked as if we would dip below two dollars with a rate of 2.0006 on Monday night. But then we rallied and by the time the week was over we were in a healthier position with a rate of 2.0344 on the table.
Finally let’s see whether a similar picture was in store for the Australian dollar. The opening rate for the new week was 1.5269 and while the first half of the week was up and down, the second half was much better. The pound ended up on a healthier 1.5447 by Friday evening.
Notable events in the world of currency
A slight improvement for the pound versus the Canadian dollar
This was a better result as the pound went from 1.5920 to 1.6027 against the Canadian currency over the course of the week.
More good news against the Swiss franc
We held out for a good result here too, climbing from 1.4348 to 1.4454 as the week came to an end.
But no good news against the Chinese yuan
Here we managed to go from 9.9630 to 9.9419, even though we hit a top rate of 10.003 on Thursday night.
It should not come as a surprise to learn that the Euro is still centre stage in the financial world. The battle to save the currency lurches from one day to the next, as this article on the Bloomberg site attests. One wonders where it will all end, but with so many people using the Euro wanting to go back to their original currencies it does make you wonder whether that will be the outcome. It certainly seems to be very expensive to try and keep it going.
Of course whatever happens with the Euro we will still be watching the currency markets very closely as 2011 comes to an end. What will 2012 have in store for us, and will the Euro be there as part of it? We’ll be here to see what happens next for the British pound, so join us again next week.
Well it looks like we’ll still have the Euro as we head into 2012. I must admit it worries me that it is still around and the politicians are still trying to save it. I think we’ll all have worse problems as a consequence of their actions. If they just let it go gracefully we’d all be able to recover from the recession far more quickly than being dragged through this mess for months to come.