Welcome to another currency report, in which we shall find out whether the British pound was able to put up a good performance against a range of other major currencies. It turned out to be a challenging time, but exactly how challenging would it be?
An overview of the currency markets for November 12th – November 16th 2012
The last time we caught up with the British pound versus the US dollar, the pound closed the week on 1.5922. From this starting point it soon fell to 1.5879 by Monday evening. This wasn’t a good start, but the rate of the fall slowed to 1.5876 by Tuesday night. Would there be any good news in the offing though? The fall continued throughout the week until the pound halted at 1.5837 on Thursday evening. It then perked up a little to 1.5882 to close out the week, so at least it managed to put the brakes on, albeit only by a tiny amount.
Now it’s time to see how the pound fared against the Euro. The opening rate was 1.2543 and this also dropped on day one, to 1.2468. It then went up again to 1.2505 before dropping back to struggle through the remainder of the week. By the time the week was over the pound had slid back to 1.2461 so things weren’t good here either.
Next we should look at the situation against the Hong Kong dollar. The opening rate for the pound was 12.341 and again we saw an initial drop to 12.307. There was clearly a pattern here that was being followed by all the major currencies, as the pound really struggled to get above those rates for the rest of the week. The final rate here turned out to be 12.312.
Moving on to the New Zealand dollar, the pound opened with a rate of 1.9594 and this also dropped to 1.9440 on day one. Here though, while the pound still struggled to do anything of note over the first few days, it did manage to end the week on a much better note. The closing rate was an impressive 1.9613.
Finally let’s see if the Aussie dollar would follow the path of the New Zealand dollar and give the pound another good result. The opening rate was 1.5366 and we had another drop to 1.5211 on day one. However this turned out to be the lowest rate of the week, and while there were tough days ahead the pound managed to close out the week on 1.5374, which was a little better than the starting rate.
Notable events in the world of currency
The pound drops against the Canadian dollar
There was bad news here as the pound fell from 1.5967 to 1.5892.
Another drop against the Swiss franc
Here too the pound fell, this time from 1.5119 to 1.5006.
Another poor result against the Chinese yuan
Here the pound began the week on 9.943 and ended it on 9.903.
So it was clear that this was not the best week of trading the pound had ever been involved in. With a challenging week all round, we should perhaps take refuge in the few good results the pound had achieved during the week. Maybe these will point the way towards a better week with better results in the future.
But should we be concerned at how the pound is performing overall? Perhaps not, as the currencies typically do rise and fall over periods of time. Many other external events can have an effect on what happens and how things pan out. This means the pound is just as susceptible to events as all other currencies are.
We’ll certainly be back next week to see how the pound has performed throughout another week, to see whether it can garner better results than it did this time around. We will see you then.