Welcome back to another currency report, where all the major currencies are viewed to see whether the British pound got stronger or weaker in recent times. Let’s see how things panned out this week.
An overview of the currency markets for January 21st – January 25th 2012
So we begin the week as usual with a look at how the British pound performed against the US dollar. The opening rate was 1.5914 but this dropped to 1.5879 by the end of the first day of trading. Not the best start, but did it mean the week would be a poor one for the pound overall? Unfortunately that’s exactly what it meant, as each subsequent day resulted in another poor performance by the pound. By the time Friday evening came we were on a rate of 1.5849, just a fraction higher than the 1.5818 we stalled on by Thursday evening.
Not the best start then, but would there be better news for us against the Euro? Here we began our campaign on 1.1944 and we had a similar drop on day one, going down to 1.1918 in the process. But whereas we had a slight improvement on the final day of the week, the same did not occur here. Instead the pound fell to a low of 1.1745 by Friday evening.
Let’s move on now to the Hong Kong dollar; we were expecting something similarly disappointing here. We started on 12.338 and sure enough the value of the pound started dropping very early on in the week. It reached a low of 12.264 on Thursday before perking up slightly to end on 12.266 – still lower than it had been on Monday though.
By the time we looked at the New Zealand dollar we were expecting a drop in the exchange rate. However it was not as bad as we had feared. The opening rate was 1.9028 and while it dropped to 1.8818 by Thursday, the pound then finished on a slightly healthier 1.8908. This was still lower of course, but it could have been much worse.
Finally let’s see whether the pattern was borne out again with the Australian dollar. Here the pound began on 1.5138 before dipping to a low of 1.5021. However, in this case the low point came on Tuesday, and after that the pound continued to increase in value. It ended up reaching a high of 1.5171 by Friday evening, higher than it had started the week on.
Notable events in the world of currency
A better result against the Canadian dollar
Here the pound climbed from 1.5757 to 1.5918 throughout the week.
But not such good news against the Swiss franc
Here we were back to bad news, as the pound slid from 1.4866 to 1.4615 over the duration of the week.
A similar story against the Chinese yuan
Here too there was bad news as the pound fell from 9.899 to 9.841 as the week went on.
So we can see it was an interesting if challenging week with regard to the British pound. In many cases the other currencies got the better of it, although there were some fleeting results here and there that showed it was not a complete whitewash against the pound.
The big question now is whether or not this pattern will continue for the next week as well. Will we see a comeback from the pound and some better results to celebrate next time, or will it be more of the same?
All in all it has been an interesting start to the New Year. As January is almost at an end already, we have to consider whether the pound will have a better time during February instead. Surely it could not go much lower than it did this week? If we can hope for anything it would be that we would see much better results for the British pound next time around, as it will hopefully climb from the disappointment we were left with this week.