Welcome back to another currency report for 2013, where this time we see the last few days of January and the first day of February. The first month has certainly gone by quickly, but the final few days wouldn’t go by without a good amount of activity on the currency markets. So let’s see what happened.
An overview of the currency markets for January 28th – February 1st 2013
Let’s start the week by focusing on how the British pound did against the US dollar. Here the pound started on 1.5819 and then dropped to 1.5733 by the end of Monday evening. There was a slight improvement over the next couple of days, but as it turned out there was better to come. By the time Friday arrived – the first day of February – the pound had reached a high of 1.5833.
The next port of call for us is the Euro. The pound had an exchange rate of 1.1745 at the start of the week, and this rapidly dropped to 1.1702 by the end of Monday evening. It perked up again to 1.1715 on Tuesday, but there was another drop the following day. As it turned out this week would be full of ups and downs, and by the time the week was over the pound had stalled on 1.1604.
There was clearly a pattern of starting the week in poor fashion, as the pound dropped from 12.266 to 12.205 against the Hong Kong dollar. But again there was better news to come. The pound managed to turn the rest of the week into a good one, as it gradually rose in value from that point onwards. Indeed, it managed to reach the heady heights of 12.283 by the time Friday evening arrived.
Let’s move on now and see whether the British pound could achieve anything notable against the New Zealand dollar. The opening rate was 1.8908 and this rose to 1.8970 on Monday evening. We then saw a significant drop to 1.8828 on Tuesday, before the rest of the week progressed in similar dramatic fashion. Finally the pound closed on 1.8789, dropping a significant amount since Monday morning.
Our last stop is with the Australian dollar, where we saw a totally different pattern. The opening rate dropped from 1.5171 to 1.5131 on day one, before heading up and doing much better across the rest of the week. The pound eventually closed on 1.5239 on Friday evening.
Notable events in the world of currency
A drop for the pound against the Canadian dollar
The pound lost ground here, dropping from 1.5918 to 1.5825 over the course of the week.
Bad news against the Swiss franc too
It was clear which currency was in the driving seat this week, as the pound fell steadily from 1.4615 to 1.4333 against the Swiss franc.
Another drop against the Icelandic krona
Here the pound started on 203.552 before falling continually to reach 199.901.
So we can see it was a week of mixed results for the British pound. It was easy to see an up and down pattern against some currencies, and while we did have the odd reasonable result the general pattern wasn’t a good one.
We are now into February though, albeit by just one day, and hopefully we will see a better pattern for the pound throughout the new month. It remains to be seen whether this will be the case, but with some up and down results we can hope we shall build on the better results in the near future.
Whatever happens next, we shall be back next week with the exchange rates from those first few days in February. Will the pound look in better shape during these first days, or will it struggle against these major currencies instead? Whatever happens we shall be here to report the ups and downs as they occur.